"pppd forgot to specify route netmask."

Michael Nelson (nelson@seahunt.imat.com)
Wed, 18 Dec 1996 19:55:41 -0800 (PST)

I just installed 2.1.16, and noticed that dmesg reports the following as
a result of starting pppd... two of them, each time pppd starts up.
Never seen them prior to this version, but then I didn't try 2.1.15.
The messages look like this:

lo UP fl=0000004b pa=0100007F/000000FF brd=FFFFFF7F dst=00000000
registered device ppp0
ppp0 UP fl=00000051 pa=0A46AE8C/FFFFFFFF brd=00000000 dst=6446AE8C
pppd forgot to specify route netmask.
pppd forgot to specify route netmask.
ppp0 UP fl=00000051 pa=0A46AE8C/FFFFFFFF brd=00000000 dst=6446AE8C
pppd forgot to specify route netmask.
pppd forgot to specify route netmask.
ppp0 UP fl=00000051 pa=0A46AE8C/FFFFFFFF brd=00000000 dst=6446AE8C
pppd forgot to specify route netmask.

Also, although I do have "netmask 255.255.255.0" in my ppp options file,
I did an "ifconfig ppp0" after the link came up and it showed the
netmask was set at 255.255.255.255! I ifconfig'd it to 255.255.255.0
and it seems ok, although it was also OK prior to making the change.

I suspect it doesn't much matter, since ppp is a point-to-point
connection, and the netmask is used to calculate the broadcast address.

Broadcast is meaningless under a p-to-p connection, so maybe it doesn't
matter.

The messages seem to be coming from linux//net/ipv4/fib.c, I don't have
the foggiest idea why they just started occurring. I haven't changed
anything in my ppp config for about a year.

Michael

--
Michael Nelson                            nelson@seahunt.imat.com
San Francisco, CA                            michaeln@csd.sgi.com