🚀 go-pugleaf

       (knowledge of Refered-to article by the reader assumed)

Hello,

I have two remarks:
   
1. You might try pppd-1.01-beta from for the sparcs to get the most
   ripe non-dialup version. Despite it's 'beta' status, it has the
   most kernel memory allocation/deallocation bugs removed. It's more
   advanced than the pl6 version you mentioned, as far as I know.

   ftp to merit.edu, directory /pub/ppp, file pppd-1.01-beta.tar.Z

2. You might want to try dp-2.2-beta.tar.Z (or -gamma, it that exists
   by now..) to get the dialup ppp package [and tell Kirk Smith
   (ks@acn.purdue.edu) to add yo to the mailing list]. It simulates
   keeping the network connection up, but has time-outs on the phone
   line, so that if (all configurable) the last tcp connection was
   closed, the phone line hangs up after 6 seconds, if the last tcp
   transmission actually occured 10 minutes ago, the phone hangs up,
   or 30 seconds after the last UDP packet... you get the idea. It
   then does an automatic redial, if traffic occurs again.

   The 2.2-beta version has some minor Makefile/include file problems
   (Kirk has my diffs for it), and tends to crash when you have an
   error in the configuration script (deref'ing zero pointers), but
   works like a charm otherwise, AND IT SUPPORTS LOADABLE KERNEL
   MODULES... at least half (i.e., you can load them, but if you do
   the unloading, the system crashes when it tries to do networking
   again). But I think it's better to only reboot the machine to
   remove or update the ppp if you want it, than to built a new kernel
   and reboot the machine :-) Maybe SUN never tested this part of
   their Kernel code? I think they don't have any loadable network
   modules of their own.

   ftp to phoenix.acn.purdue.edu, directory pub, and get PPP.readme
   (1k) with further advice.

   You might want to configure the sendmails at both ends to only
   actually send the mail, say, two times a day, to minimize costs
   [mark the connection expensive].

I used both packages. I like the latter better, because it's less work
and less to backup if you want to install it, and because I won't get 
'how is the ppp startup command' phone calls all the time.

BTW: nfs? You might want to completely avoid it. Try mounting a remote
   filesystem to get the feeling. Basically, you have to avoid
   anything which does stats because they cause lots of traffic, and
   anything which does writes because nfs writes always wait for the
   'written to disk' confirmation from the other side.


--
	Ignatios Souvatzis
	ignatios@cs.uni-bonn.de souva@babsy.mpifr-bonn.mpg.de