[SLE] PPP connection keeps dropping, and another related problem

[Bernd]

Hi! Been off the list for a couple of months. I tried this on the forum a
week ago without any response. I'm a bit frustrated and need your help.

My ppp connection keeps dropping. Yes, I have a dialup connection. I'm using
8.1 with KDE 3.1.1, with a U.S. Robotics 56K Performance Pro V.92 PCI modem,
which is fully supported. I manually start/stop my connection with
KInternet.

When setting up my modem in Yast, I set the idle time out to -0-, which means
infinite time out, or in my understanding, I'm connected until 'I' want to
drop the connection. I have tried different time out settings with the same
results. I have 2 different POPs I am using, and they are with different
telephone networks, so I don't think it's the ISP that's dropping me. I get
dropped while surfing even after 30 seconds sometimes. I can go as long as 20
minutes on occasion. I've set up lengthy downloads at night before going to
bed, and wake up to find only a few megs downloaded before I was dumped!!!

Here's a sample of the one of the log entries from last week:

pppd: IPCP terminated by peer
pppd: LCP terminated by peer
pppd: Script /etc/ppp/ip-down finished (pid 2313), status = 0x0
We are disconnected. (2003-08-06 18:56:40 PDT)
pppd: Connection terminated.
pppd: Connect time 15.7 minutes.
pppd: Sent 91200 bytes, received 166977 bytes.
pppd: Hangup (SIGHUP)
pppd died: (exit code 0)

I got a lengthy 15.7 minutes that time!

I'm also having problems with starting the connection after these wonderful
disconnects. It'll hang at the init string and won't go further. So I
manually disconnect and try again, until it goes through (sometimes 4-5 times
before success).

I'm SOOOO Frustrated!!!

Please help!!

MTIA

Bernd
--
"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather
wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them
to yearn for the vast and endless sea."

Antoine de St. Exupery

[Bernd]

Post by Bernd
My ppp connection keeps dropping. Yes, I have a dialup connection. I'm
using 8.1 with KDE 3.1.1, with a U.S. Robotics 56K Performance Pro V.92 PCI
modem, which is fully supported. I manually start/stop my connection with
KInternet.

snip

Here's more current info from the log:

We are connected. (2003-08-15 18:57:18 PDT)
pppd: Hangup (SIGHUP)
pppd: Modem hangup
pppd: Connection terminated.
pppd: Connect time 5.6 minutes.
pppd: Sent 2246 bytes, received 18563 bytes.
pppd: Script /etc/ppp/ip-down finished (pid 9581), status = 0x0
We are disconnected. (2003-08-15 19:02:48 PDT)
pppd died: A modem hung up the phone (exit code 16)

Starting connection. (2003-08-15 19:08:50 PDT)
pppd: Plugin passwordfd.so loaded.
pppd: --> WvDial: Internet dialer version 1.42
pppd: --> Initializing modem.
pppd: --> Sending: ATZ
pppd: OK
pppd: --> Sending: AT Q0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
pppd: AT Q0 V1 E1 S0=0 &C1 &D2 +FCLASS=0
pppd: OK
pppd: --> Sending: ATM0
pppd: ATM0
pppd: OK
pppd: --> Modem initialized.
pppd: --> Sending: ATDT5551234
pppd: --> Waiting for carrier.
pppd: ATDT5551234
pppd: CONNECT 42666/ARQ/V90/LAPM/V42BIS
pppd: --> Carrier detected. Waiting for prompt.
pppd: UQKT2 stuff.net
pppd: Login:
pppd: --> Looks like a login prompt.
pppd: --> Sending: ***@blah.com
pppd: ***@blah.com
pppd: Password:
pppd: --> Looks like a password prompt.
pppd: --> Sending: (password)
pppd: Entering PPP Session.
pppd: IP address is xx.xxx.xx.xx
pppd: MTU is 1524.
pppd: --> Looks like a welcome message.
pppd: Serial connection established.
pppd: Using interface ppp0
pppd: Connect: ppp0 <--> /dev/modem
pppd: local IP address xx.xxx.xx.xx
pppd: remote IP address xx.xxx.xx.xx
pppd: primary DNS address xxx.x.x.xxx
pppd: secondary DNS address xxx.x.x.xxx
pppd: Script /etc/ppp/ip-up finished (pid 9752), status = 0x0
We are connected. (2003-08-15 19:09:24 PDT)

We are connected. (2003-08-15 19:09:24 PDT)
pppd: Hangup (SIGHUP)
pppd: Modem hangup
pppd: Connection terminated.
pppd: Connect time 55.4 minutes.
pppd: Sent 74249 bytes, received 605838 bytes.
pppd: Script /etc/ppp/ip-down finished (pid 10236), status = 0x0
We are disconnected. (2003-08-15 20:04:45 PDT)
pppd died: A modem hung up the phone (exit code 16)

Post by Bernd
I'm SOOOO Frustrated!!!
Please help!!
MTIA

Bernd
--
"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather
wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them
to yearn for the vast and endless sea."

Antoine de St. Exupery

[Carlos E. R.]

Post by Bernd
We are connected. (2003-08-15 19:09:24 PDT)
pppd: Hangup (SIGHUP)
pppd: Modem hangup
pppd: Connection terminated.
pppd: Connect time 55.4 minutes.
pppd: Sent 74249 bytes, received 605838 bytes.
pppd: Script /etc/ppp/ip-down finished (pid 10236), status = 0x0
We are disconnected. (2003-08-15 20:04:45 PDT)
pppd died: A modem hung up the phone (exit code 16)

This says that your modem disconnected; ie, your side:

16 The link was terminated by the modem hanging up.


I don't really know how kinternet works; I prefer to use wvdial directly.
If the timeout is set to 0, it will redial again - it should, at least.

As a keepalive, instead of periodically pinging somebody, I use fetchmail
as a daemon.
--
Cheers,
Carlos Robinson

[Bernd]

Thanks for the hints.

I did check the physical phone line, and found that it was crimped within the
wall jack. I was actually excited to find this. I cut off the bad part of
the line and rewired the jack. Afterward, I started a download again, only
to find out the problem wasn't fixed. I have not contacted my ISP's tech
support yet. Should do that Monday A.M.. I checked the man for PPPD exit
code (16), which stated that the modem did the disconnecting. Mine, or my
ISP's?

One thing I forgot was the content of /var/log/messages. Here's a one part of
the log after I have connected to the internet and am dropped:

Aug 16 23:40:25 linux kernel: SuSE-FW-DROP-NEW-CONNECT IN=ppp0 OUT= MAC=
SRC=xx.x.xx.xxx DST=xx.x.xx.xx LEN=48 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=126 ID=1031 DF
PROTO=TCP SPT=3353 DPT=135 WINDOW=8760 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 OPT
(020405B401010402)
--
"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather
wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them
to yearn for the vast and endless sea."

Antoine de St. Exupery

[John]

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Post by Bernd
Thanks for the hints.
I did check the physical phone line, and found that it was crimped within
the wall jack. I was actually excited to find this. I cut off the bad
part of the line and rewired the jack. Afterward, I started a download
again, only to find out the problem wasn't fixed. I have not contacted my
ISP's tech support yet. Should do that Monday A.M.. I checked the man for
PPPD exit code (16), which stated that the modem did the disconnecting.
Mine, or my ISP's?

I've found that with exit 16, it's *always* been the ISP dropping me.

Post by Bernd
One thing I forgot was the content of /var/log/messages. Here's a one part
Aug 16 23:40:25 linux kernel: SuSE-FW-DROP-NEW-CONNECT IN=ppp0 OUT= MAC=
SRC=xx.x.xx.xxx DST=xx.x.xx.xx LEN=48 TOS=0x00 PREC=0x00 TTL=126 ID=1031 DF
PROTO=TCP SPT=3353 DPT=135 WINDOW=8760 RES=0x00 SYN URGP=0 OPT
(020405B401010402)

Heh...your firewall is working as it's supposed to. The DTP=135 (Destination
Port) means that that stupid RPC worm is still out there, and of course
trying to get into any system it can...including yours (and mine when I last
checked). It's now even conceivable your ISP hasn't patched itself, you'll
hopefully find out Monday in the mornin'.

John
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[Carlos E. R.]

Post by Bernd
support yet. Should do that Monday A.M.. I checked the man for PPPD exit
code (16), which stated that the modem did the disconnecting. Mine, or my
ISP's?

I suppose yours, but I'm not 100% sure.

I would adjust wvdial for automatic reconnection (redial). Or,
alternatively, dial on demand. However, if an ftp transmission gets cut in
the middle, the networks goes down, and you redial (automatically or
manually), you get a new IP: the ftp client doesn't cope and remains
stuck. Only some ftp clients are prepared to do a full reconnect, and
continue downloading.
--
Cheers,
Carlos Robinson

[Jerry Feldman]

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On Fri, 15 Aug 2003 22:22:55 -0700

Post by Bernd
My ppp connection keeps dropping. Yes, I have a dialup connection. I'm
using 8.1 with KDE 3.1.1, with a U.S. Robotics 56K Performance Pro
V.92 PCI modem, which is fully supported. I manually start/stop my
connection with KInternet.
When setting up my modem in Yast, I set the idle time out to -0-,
which means infinite time out, or in my understanding, I'm connected
until 'I' want to drop the connection. I have tried different time out
settings with the same results. I have 2 different POPs I am using,
and they are with different telephone networks, so I don't think it's
the ISP that's dropping me. I get dropped while surfing even after 30
seconds sometimes. I can go as long as 20 minutes on occasion. I've
set up lengthy downloads at night before going to bed, and wake up to
find only a few megs downloaded before I was dumped!!!
pppd: IPCP terminated by peer
pppd: LCP terminated by peer
pppd: Script /etc/ppp/ip-down finished (pid 2313), status = 0x0
We are disconnected. (2003-08-06 18:56:40 PDT)

This appears to have been dropped at the other end, not by your Linux
box. Recently I was on a trip and was dialup on my laptop. My connection
was generally stable, but I did get disconnected once.

There are many reasons a dialup can become disconnected. Sometimes
excessive line noise, sometimes the ISP will drop connections.

Also, make sure you disable call waiting. If you have call waiting and
have not disabled it, an incoming call can cause a disconnect.

Because of the varying length of times, that your problem may be related
to your phone network.

A friend once had a similar problem. Apparently the refrigerator in an
adjacent room caused enough interference. It can be as strange as that.

- --
Jerry Feldman <***@blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9
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[François Pinard]

[Jerry Feldman]

There are many reasons a dialup can become disconnected. Sometimes
excessive line noise, sometimes the ISP will drop connections.
Also, make sure you disable call waiting. If you have call waiting and
have not disabled it, an incoming call can cause a disconnect.

Yes! I lost some time on this one, a few years ago! :-)

Because of the varying length of times, that your problem may be related
to your phone network.

Could it be that you have an ISP which is aggressive against idle time?
This happened to me in the past. A simple solution is to send a packet once
in a while, just to prove that there is something living at your end. For
sending a packet every two minutes, in a shell:

ping -i 120 SOME-REMOTE-IP &

However, for being a good citizen, you should make sure you do not forget
this process running if you are really getting away from your computer.

Another solution, which I probably like better, is to trigger PPP
connections on demand. If I remember well, YaST nicely helped me into
setting this up, on this SuSE 8.2 system. The idea is that the connection
is re-established whenever it gets needed again, if it happened to be
dropped in the meantime. You have to suffer a few seconds once in a while
for establishing a connection, but you might feel able to bear it. :-)

[Jerry Feldman]

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On 16 Aug 2003 09:25:07 -0400

Post by François Pinard
Could it be that you have an ISP which is aggressive against idle
time? This happened to me in the past. A simple solution is to send a
packet once in a while, just to prove that there is something living
ping -i 120 SOME-REMOTE-IP &

I didn't think of this when I responded to the original poster, but
based on his explanation of the problem, I don't think this is the
problem. He was talking about logging in, and starting several
downloads, and getting disconnected before the downloads are complete.

Another related issue is that some phone companies take down connections
after some period of time. But, again, my thought is still that Bernd's
problem is probably related to the phone line itself because of the
random time.
- --
Jerry Feldman <***@blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix user group
http://www.blu.org PGP key id:C5061EA9
PGP Key fingerprint:053C 73EC 3AC1 5C44 3E14 9245 FB00 3ED5 C506 1EA9
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[Bernd (by way of Bernd )]

On Sunday, 17 August, 2003 05:01, Carlos E. R. wrote:
<snip>

Post by Carlos E. R.
I would adjust wvdial for automatic reconnection (redial).

I read the wvdial, wvdialconf, and wvdial.conf man pages. I did not find the
wvdialrc file, that is mentioned, on my system. I did run wvdialconf for
/etc/wvdial.conf, then inserted the line "Auto Reconnect = 1" at the bottom
of the file. Odd though! When I connect to any of my providers, the changes
that were made by wvdialconf show, except the "Auto Reconnect" still shows as
"no"!?!?

Suggestions?

I did get in touch with my ISP regarding the drops. They stated that it
sounded like the worm also. They're looking into the problem. Funny!?!
Maybe not! The tech said his mother got the worm through them.
Apparently she didn't have a firewall set up to stop it. Oooops!!! Sorry
Mom! ;-(

They gave me another network to try, yet the problem is still the same. The
max time connected is 59 minutes. Seems strange though; trying to download
again and I am disconnected at 55, 59, 58, and 54 minutes; fairly consistant
in length of time.

Probably what peaves me the most is that when my download is complete, after
all the disconnects, the file is corrupted in some way. I'm using wget to
download, which allows the file to continue to be downloaded after the
disruption. Yet, when the file is downloaded completely, the EOF markers
are placed wrong, so the entire file won't untar, and is useless. I have
tried to download the new OOo 1.1rc3 three times now, each time from a
different mirror, with the same results. Aaargh!!!

Bernd
--
"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather
wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them
to yearn for the vast and endless sea."

Antoine de St. Exupery

[Carlos E. R.]

Post by Bernd (by way of Bernd )

Post by Carlos E. R.
I would adjust wvdial for automatic reconnection (redial).

I read the wvdial, wvdialconf, and wvdial.conf man pages. I did not find the
wvdialrc file, that is mentioned, on my system. I did run wvdialconf for
/etc/wvdial.conf, then inserted the line "Auto Reconnect = 1" at the bottom
of the file. Odd though! When I connect to any of my providers, the changes
that were made by wvdialconf show, except the "Auto Reconnect" still shows as
"no"!?!?

Er... but you are dialing your providers using something else that is not
wvdial, so some settings can be modified (overridden) by whatever you
use, kinternet for example.

You have to either do that change in kinternet - assuming it is possible,
I am not familiar with kinternet - or use wvdial directly on a console.

Post by Bernd (by way of Bernd )
I did get in touch with my ISP regarding the drops. They stated that it
sounded like the worm also.

Huh? How would that affect you? It goes after windows systems, not linux :-?

Or is it that it affected them, not you directly?

Post by Bernd (by way of Bernd )
They're looking into the problem. Funny!?!
Maybe not! The tech said his mother got the worm through them.
Apparently she didn't have a firewall set up to stop it. Oooops!!! Sorry
Mom! ;-(

Ough. In Spain we say something like "the ironmonger with the wooden
spoon".

Post by Bernd (by way of Bernd )
They gave me another network to try, yet the problem is still the same. The
max time connected is 59 minutes. Seems strange though; trying to download
again and I am disconnected at 55, 59, 58, and 54 minutes; fairly consistant
in length of time.

Mmm, that is very interesting. Sounds like a time limit somewhere.

Post by Bernd (by way of Bernd )
Probably what peaves me the most is that when my download is complete, after
all the disconnects, the file is corrupted in some way. I'm using wget to
download, which allows the file to continue to be downloaded after the
disruption. Yet, when the file is downloaded completely, the EOF markers
are placed wrong, so the entire file won't untar, and is useless. I have
tried to download the new OOo 1.1rc3 three times now, each time from a
different mirror, with the same results. Aaargh!!!

Too bad... I'm not an expert on the insides of the ftp protocol, so I
don't know if it makes sure that whatever is written is correct, even if
incomplete. The other idea would be that they (your isp) corrupt bytes in
transit - but wouldn't the protocol detect transmission errors? It must
do!

Post by Bernd (by way of Bernd )
"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather
wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them
to yearn for the vast and endless sea."
Antoine de St. Exupery

I think it must be his anniversary or something, I'm hearing things about
him now days.
--
Cheers,
Carlos Robinson

[Bernd]

Post by Bernd
My ppp connection keeps dropping. Yes, I have a dialup connection. I'm
using 8.1 with KDE 3.1.1, with a U.S. Robotics 56K Performance Pro V.92 PCI
modem, which is fully supported. I manually start/stop my connection with
KInternet.

Here's what my ISP had to say about the whole thing, so far...:

*>"...the @*** network numbers are blocked on the ports used by the 'Blaster'
*>worm, so that should not be a problem on that network. The other access
*>numbers are blocked on some security ports, but are not as 'tight' as the
*>'@***' network.
*>
*>I checked with a Linux tech with our provider, and he found nothing wrong
*>with your setup info. Your connection logs indicate normal call
*>terminations, which means it appears that you terminated the connections,
*>rather than being dropped by the servers."

If I'm dropping my own connection, *What On Earth* on my system is doing
this???

On my last download attempts, the time I was able to stay online before being
dropped was just short of 60 minutes (54, 57, 59...), yet it has been fairly
inconsistent at other times (30sec - 20 minutes). I have repaired 'what could
have been a problem' with my phone line, yet can't get past 60 minutes on my
connection. It is consistently (error 16), which states that it is 'My'
modem, yet, some have said that even with this error code, it could be the
ISP dropping me. I really don't care who it is, I just want to find the
problem and fix it.

PLEASE - Any other thoughts???

MTIA

Bernd
--
"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up the men to gather
wood, divide the work, and give orders. Instead, teach them
to yearn for the vast and endless sea."

Antoine de St. Exupery

[Basil Chupin]

Post by Bernd

Post by Bernd
My ppp connection keeps dropping. Yes, I have a dialup connection. I'm
using 8.1 with KDE 3.1.1, with a U.S. Robotics 56K Performance Pro V.92 PCI
modem, which is fully supported. I manually start/stop my connection with
KInternet.

*>worm, so that should not be a problem on that network. The other access
*>numbers are blocked on some security ports, but are not as 'tight' as the
*>
*>I checked with a Linux tech with our provider, and he found nothing wrong
*>with your setup info. Your connection logs indicate normal call
*>terminations, which means it appears that you terminated the connections,
*>rather than being dropped by the servers."
If I'm dropping my own connection, *What On Earth* on my system is doing
this???
On my last download attempts, the time I was able to stay online before being
dropped was just short of 60 minutes (54, 57, 59...), yet it has been fairly
inconsistent at other times (30sec - 20 minutes). I have repaired 'what could
have been a problem' with my phone line, yet can't get past 60 minutes on my
connection. It is consistently (error 16), which states that it is 'My'
modem, yet, some have said that even with this error code, it could be the
ISP dropping me. I really don't care who it is, I just want to find the
problem and fix it.
PLEASE - Any other thoughts???
MTIA
Bernd

The first thing that you do is to borrow another modem and use that to
se what happens and this way you start eliminating the varables which
may be causng you the problem.

The other thing you should do is to amend the /etc/ppp/options file. I
altered the following 4 settings (about 3/4 way down) when I was having
troubles:

1. REM out the line "lcp-echo-interval 30"

2. REM out the next lne "lcp-echo-failure 4"

3. Alter the line, 3 lines down, to read "idle 1200" - this controls
what the idle time is before you disconnect from the ISP

4. Alter the next line to read "maxfail 30"

You don't by any chance have any FAX machines etc or another telephone
on the same line you are using to connect to the Net? Some of these
things draw power from the phone line to recharge a capacitor (for
storage of numbers in memory) and this causes line noise which then maks
the modem drop the connection.
--
Understanding only begins with the act of perception.

[Bernd]

Post by Basil Chupin

Post by Bernd
My ppp connection keeps dropping. Yes, I have a dialup connection. I'm
using 8.1 with KDE 3.1.1, with a U.S. Robotics 56K Performance Pro V.92
PCI modem, which is fully supported. I manually start/stop my
connection with KInternet.

<snip>

Post by Basil Chupin
The other thing you should do is to amend the /etc/ppp/options file. I
altered the following 4 settings (about 3/4 way down) when I was having
1. REM out the line "lcp-echo-interval 30"
2. REM out the next lne "lcp-echo-failure 4"
3. Alter the line, 3 lines down, to read "idle 1200" - this controls
what the idle time is before you disconnect from the ISP
4. Alter the next line to read "maxfail 30"

I did this, with no difference. I even REM out the idle time, still no
difference. Shouldn't be idle time anyway, this is happening even during
downloads. I even tried 'persist', along with 'holdoff'. Yet, after the
second disconnect it quit 'persist'ing, and kept a lock on the modem that I
wasn't able to kill.

I don't have another modem to test yet, but working on that.

Post by Basil Chupin
You don't by any chance have any FAX machines etc or another telephone
on the same line you are using to connect to the Net? Some of these
things draw power from the phone line to recharge a capacitor (for
storage of numbers in memory) and this causes line noise which then maks
the modem drop the connection.

Unfortunately, I can't afford to get a separate phone line, otherwise I'd get
DSL instead of dialup.

I am studying up on SIGHUP, which I'm finding is the signal that is
consistently being sent to pppd.

Any ideas...

MTIA

Bernd
--
"It is better to light a small candle, than to curse the darkness."

Confucious