Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 17808
infinite pppd loop using plugin or per-user options
Last modified: 2008-05-01 11:37:58 EDT
2.3.11 (or earlier?) introduced 'plugin' option, and one of hooks plugins can define is 'pap_auth_hook' that can return a wordlist of additional options for this particular user. This is relly very good and useful feature, as there is at least some demand on having separate options for each (group of) user. But if that hook sets up option list, pppd will loop forever eating 100% cpu and ignoring signals (except -9), and sitting "on line" with tty opened, preventing this line to be dialed in. I quickly made my dial-in server unusable when all 16 modem lines was locked by looped pppd, thus preventing any dial-in... Ok, fix is trivial, it is in `options_from_list()' routine -- it checks the first option again and again wihout jumping to next one... As such, this routine was _never_ checked/executed by author/testers/users! I'll not forward this report/fix to pppd author, as it is useless. He just ignores any letters sent to him (as I can guess) -- I sent many, many bugreports to him without any responce... BTW, does anybody knows where is a current home for pppd? I saw 2.4.0 pre/beta somewhere, but it is not in usual location... P.S. I see that RedHat also isn't very "responsible" for ppp package... :(
Created attachment 3523 [details] patch to prevent infinite loop in options_from_list() routine
Changed severity to high (may be wrong) -- that bad situation I had with my dial-in server shouldn't be repeated...
The current home for pppd is ftp://linuxcare.com.au/pub/ppp/.
Fixed in mainstream (probably in 2.4.0 version or so)