When I installed KDE4, the version of kppp which came with it would not connect properly with my ISP. Figuring that kppp was simply broken, and noting that the KDE developers were describing KDE4.0 in terms of a pseudo-beta release, I decided to wait for KDE4.1.
KDE4.1 arrived and kppp was still behaving the same.
The symptoms were an immediate dropping of the link by pppd with a message about a failure to authenticate. By turning on the debug feature I could see that the difference between the old and new kppp occurred when the ISP end responded to the "PAP AuthReq" with a "AuthNak". Apparently, the password (unhelpfully obfuscated by pppd) was incorrect. For some reason, kppp was sending an incorrect password.
After some digging, I noticed that the KDE3 kppp was setuid root but the KDE4 version did not have the setuid bit set. Starting the KDE4 version with sudo resulted in correct behaviour.
Looking further I notice that kppp tries to open "/etc/resolv.conf" (which is read-only to everyone except root) for writing and fails. Perhaps the password problem is triggered when this happens and it causes the password to become corrupted, or be replaced by something else.
Doing a few searches, it seems that nobody else has had this problem. My installation appears to be broken. There are several areas which are candidates:
So, can anyone offer advice about the correct setup for kppp?
KDE4.1 arrived and kppp was still behaving the same.
The symptoms were an immediate dropping of the link by pppd with a message about a failure to authenticate. By turning on the debug feature I could see that the difference between the old and new kppp occurred when the ISP end responded to the "PAP AuthReq" with a "AuthNak". Apparently, the password (unhelpfully obfuscated by pppd) was incorrect. For some reason, kppp was sending an incorrect password.
After some digging, I noticed that the KDE3 kppp was setuid root but the KDE4 version did not have the setuid bit set. Starting the KDE4 version with sudo resulted in correct behaviour.
Looking further I notice that kppp tries to open "/etc/resolv.conf" (which is read-only to everyone except root) for writing and fails. Perhaps the password problem is triggered when this happens and it causes the password to become corrupted, or be replaced by something else.
Doing a few searches, it seems that nobody else has had this problem. My installation appears to be broken. There are several areas which are candidates:
- The installation of the new kppp into the KDE menu is incorrect and kppp should be started by kdesu or something similar (a PITA).
- The installation of the kppp binary is incorrect and it should be setuid (this seems to be unlikely).
- The permissions of /etc/resolv.conf are incorrect.
So, can anyone offer advice about the correct setup for kppp?
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