Thanks, DMR, for keeping up with this thread and sharing your knowledge and experience.

To continue on with uncommenting, the readme file says: Not all systems can support the sync option. Uncomment the next line if yours can. #SYNC=sync.

If you want your PPPoE connection to automatically reconnect, uncomment the next line. #PERSIST=persist.

So, if I need to, how do I uncomment these two?

Another instruction I don't understand: If you have the files /release/pppoed-2.0 /release/pppoed-2.2, ( I have both) rename the file that corresponds to your OS version number to pppoed.

Don't have a clue what they're talking about here.

The sync option can reduce the load that pppoed puts on the CPU, which is a Good Thing. If your system doesn't support it, I think the sync option just gets ignored (but I'm not positive). Persist is self-explanatory, and sounds useful to me, although I don't know if there are detrimental issues with the function.
To uncomment the lines in question, all you have to do is open the file that the readme refers to in a text editor, delete the "#" at the beginning of the lines, and save the file. * Make a backup copy of the file before you modify it!! *

The pppoed-2.0 and pppoed-2.2 files appear to be precompiled (ready to use) versions of the PPPoE client. The "2.0" means that pppoed-2.0 was compiled for kernel version 2.0, and the "2.2" means that pppoed-2.2 was compiled for kernel version 2.2. What the readme is saying is that if your Linux version uses kernel version 2.2, rename "pppoed-2.2" to just "pppoed"; if you use kernel version 2.0, rename pppoed-2.0 to "pppoed". pppoed is the real name of the client, regardless of kernel; the 2.x numbers were just added to differentiate the versions of the client program. The readme's use of the term "OS version number" is vague, and I'm not surprised it had you scratching your head.

Your version of Mandrake is using a newer 2.4.x version of the kernel, so neither of the ready-made files will work for you, and you'd need to compile a new version from source. I don't know what specific instructions your package has for this, but I've got a sneaking feeling that the compile would fail miserably (for a number of ugly reasons that I won't go into). Also, I don't think this particular client is meant to work with 2.4 kernels anyway, as the 2.4 kernels now have built-in support for PPPoE (although it may not be enabled by default). If your ISP isn't Linux-savy, they probably aren't aware of the recent changes, so they just gave you what they had.

The PPPoE client that most Linux DSL users seem to use is a program from Roaring Penguin. I'll suggest that you at least check it out, but as I said, I don't use DSL so I can't offer any advice about the program.

I visited Roaring Penquin. Sounds good to me, although I'm not sure which download to choose. They have these options:

Binary RPM for Red Hat 6.2 (Intel) rp-pppoe-3.3-1.i386.rpm
Source RPM for RPM-based distributions (includes GUI) rp-pppoe-3.3-1.src.rpm
Source gzipped tar file (includes GUI) rp-pppoe-3.3.ar.gz and GPG Signature
Patched ppp software for kernel-mode PPPoE ppp-2.4.1-pppoe2.tgz
GUI -- download the GUI packages in addition to the core software. GUI Binary RPM for Red Hat 6.2 (ntel)

I'm guessing: Source RPM for RPM-based distros.

Hi, hi.

hey, I have DSL right now, an dI use Roaring pinguin, it's really good.
What you want to do, is download the Tar sourceball, in other words the file that ends with a .tar.gz extension.
That's very easy to unzip and install.
now, for easier use, download the GUI version, which stands for graphical user interface, , you just wanna click buttons on a nice looking window.
So download the one that has GUI in the file name and the one that ends in .tar.gz

then after you downloaded just go like

tar -zxf filename.tar.gz

you'll get a folder, go into the folder and read the README file...but if I recall correctly, you just need to ./config ./make ./makeinstall(as root)

and then you should be set.
Or, you can download the rpm version...same with the GUI in the file name, and then just type rpm -Uhv filename.rpm
and you'll find your rpKpppoe under the Internet menu in your startup menu,
good luck, let me know if you got any problems.

zLinuxz

I downloaded the tar.gz. file and the GPG signature. According to the readme file for the tar.gz, all I had to do was type ./go or ./go-gui and it would compile, and install. When I did this:

bash: ./go-gui: no such file or directory

The read me file said if that did't work, unpack the file with this command: tar xzvf rp-pppoe-xxx.tar.gz. I did that and got these errors:

tar (child): rp-pppoe-xxx.tar.gz: cannot open: no such file or directory
tar(child): error is not recoverable:exiting now
tar: child returned status 2
tar:error exit delayed from previous errors.

What am I doing to make linux call me a child?