OK network people, heres one for you...

Slackware 8.1, using ppd 2.4.1 that came in the distro.
box dials into PPP 56k dialup ISP.

When dialed in with ppp my /var/log/syslog fills up with lines like this:

Jan 20 21:18:44 Scoob modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module ppp0
Jan 20 21:19:48 Scoob last message repeated 42 times
Jan 20 21:20:44 Scoob last message repeated 42 times
Jan 20 21:20:55 Scoob last message repeated 7 times
Jan 20 21:29:41 Scoob modprobe: modprobe: Can't locate module ppp0
Jan 20 21:30:42 Scoob last message repeated 39 times
Jan 20 21:31:47 Scoob last message repeated 43 times
Jan 20 21:32:42 Scoob last message repeated 42 times

It's the shipped 2.4.18 kernel although I did rebuild it to get SMP support (dual ppro200 box)

lsmod shows only this stuff related to ppp:
Module Size Used by Tainted: P
ppp_async 6304 1 (autoclean)
serial 44644 1 (autoclean)
ppp_generic 16892 3 (autoclean) [ppp_async]
slhc 4352 1 (autoclean) [ppp_generic]

the rest is iptables modules, ethernet NIC modules, soundcard modules, unused USB and parallel port modules, a couple codepage modules and vfat and fat

I entered this command:
root@scoob:/etc# grep ppp * -RH
and the only files that reference ppp anything that aren't commented out are /etc/rc.d/rc.S and the iptables lines in my /etc/rc.d/rc.firewall.

I set up ppp by running the pppsetup script that came with slackware 8.1 and then modifying my ppp options file. ppp0 is referenced in my ppp-stop script but not in my ppp-go script.

So my question is what can be trying to modprobe ppp0 and how do I stop it?

I get those messages after a ppp session has dropped...

In my syslog.conf I have added the line
daemon.debug;*.info /var/log/ppp0

and the messages are in that file.
I suspect it has something to do with the 'persist' option and the ppp-watch programme that monitors the connection.
When pppd is terminated, ppp-watch can still be active, but without kernel modules...

Well, that's the theory so far...

It's an internal modem?

Once a connection is established, pppd uses ppp0 as the first interface, subsequent connections get ppp~