I have problems with kernel 2.6.14 and pppoe (using rp-pppoe), system is gentoo. Tried everything I could think of (remove cbq, use modules, use no modules, use kernel-mode) and switched back to 2.6.13 at last where everything works fine.
The problem is, after having established a ppp connection, stoping it or having it disconnected after 24h by the peer will result in a "[ip-down] <defunct>" process , making restart / reconnection impossible. The system then fails to cleanly reboot (showing every 2 seconds a new line of "unregister_netdevice: waiting for ppp0 to become free. Usage count = 1") and needs hard reset (or reset by SysRq).

Does anybody have encountered similar problems? Any ideas how to solve this?

I suppose it has to do with the complete drop of devfs in 2.6.14, but I am using udev anyway, and do so with the working 2.6.13 kernel.