Re: ifconfig ppp0 errors

[James Carlson <carlsonj@workingcode.com>]

Slawomir Skret wrote:
> I tried to use the "debug" and "kdebug" flags when starting pppd but get
> only the configuration related info but nothing during the runtime that
> would tell me why the errors occurred or what do they mean. From what I
> read, the ifconfig reports the contents of the /proc/net/dev file which
> is updated by the kernel modules but again it is a statistics reporter
> only without describing the nature of the errors.
> 
> How can I get more information about these errors?

How did you use "kdebug?"  It doesn't work quite the same way as "debug"
-- it takes an argument, and on most platforms, the argument is an
integer interpreted as a set of flags representing the debug information
to enable.  "kdebug 7" usually turns everything on.

The "debug" option is unlikely to help when you're talking about basic
I/O errors.  The "debug" option causes the system to log the details of
the PPP negotiation between the peers, but this usually has little to do
with I/O problems.

And where did you look for the messages generated by those options?
/etc/syslog.conf directs these things to files depending on the origin
of the message, and the severity.  You may need to modify
/etc/syslog.conf (and SIGHUP syslogd) to see everything.

Did you try using the "pppstats" command?  If the errors are related to
data compression or the like, then pppstats may well give you more
details than kdebug.  At least, I'd use pppstats to rule out other problems.

What options are you using?  Have you tried disabling data compression
with "noccp"?

How fast does your "serial bus" run?  Is it likely to drop data when
there are bursts -- as you might see with packet-oriented networking
protocols, such as PPP?

-- 
James Carlson         42.703N 71.076W         <carlsonj@workingcode.com>