PPPOED(8)

NAME
pppoed - handle incoming PPP over Ethernet connections

SYNOPSIS
pppoed [-Fd] [-P pidfile] [-a name] [-e exec | -l label] [-n ngdebug] [-p provider] interface

DESCRIPTION
The pppoed utility listens to the given interface for PPP over Ethernet (PPPoE) service request packets, and actions them by negotiating a session then invoking a ppp(8) program. The negotiation is implemented by the “pppoe” netgraph node. See ng_pppoe(4) for details.

The pppoed utility will only offer services to clients requesting services from the given provider, which is taken as an empty name if not provided. If a provider name of “*” is given, any PPPoE requests will be offered service.

The supplied name will be given as the access concentrator name when establishing the connection. If no name is given, the current base hostname is used.

After receiving a request (PADI) from the PPPoE netgraph node, pppoed fork(2)s a child process and returns to service further requests. The child process offers service (using name) and waits for a SUCCESS indication from the PPPoE node. On receipt of the SUCCESS indication, pppoed will execute

    exec /usr/sbin/ppp -direct label

as a shell sub-process. If label has not been specified, it defaults to provider. It is possible to specify another command using the exec argument. This is mandatory if provider and label are not given. The child process will have standard input and standard output attached to the same netgraph(4) data socket (see ng_socket(4)) when started.

The environment variables HISMACADDR and ACNAME are made available to the child process and are set to the MAC address of the peer and the name of the AC respectively.

Upon invocation, pppoed will attach a “pppoe” netgraph node to the relevant “ether” node using “interface”: as the node name, and then connect that “pppoe” node to a local “socket” node. If the -F option has not been given, pppoed will then go into the background and disassociate itself from the controlling terminal. When the -F option is given, pppoed stays in the foreground.

If the -d option is given, additional diagnostics are provided (see the DIAGNOSTICS section below). If the -n option is given, NgSetDebug() is called with an argument of ngdebug.

If pidfile is given, pppoed will write its process ID to this file on startup.

DIAGNOSTICS
After creating the necessary netgraph(4) nodes as described above, pppoed uses syslogd(8) to report all incoming connections. If the -d option is given, pppoed will report on the child processes creation of a new netgraph socket, its service offer and the invocation of the ppp(8) program. If the -n option is given, netgraph diagnostic messages are also redirected to syslogd(8).

It is sometimes useful to add the following to /etc/syslog.conf:

    !pppoed
    *.*				/var/log/pppoed.log

and the following to /etc/newsyslog.conf:

    /var/log/pppoed.log			640  3	   100	*     Z

SEE ALSO
NgSetDebug(3), netgraph(4), ng_ether(4), ng_pppoe(4), ng_socket(4), syslog.conf(5), ppp(8), syslogd(8)

HISTORY
The pppoed utility was written by Brian Somers <brian@Awfulhak.org> and first appeared in FreeBSD 3.4.

BUGS
If another netgraph node is using the given interface, pppoed will fail to start. This is because netgraph(4) does not currently allow node chaining. This may change in the future.