Rick Green wrote:

I'm using kppp on SuSE 7.2 to connect to my ISP. When I bring the session down, I get the following strange message in /var/log/messages:

pppd[28553]: Couldn't release PPP unit: Inappropriate ioctl for device

Can anyone shed any light on this? Is it indicative of a problem I should fix before it causes real trouble?

I wouldn't worry about it, its just a message. I don't use kde, and I have the same error reported. It is because of I don't use the "ip-down" command in /etc/ppp. I start my connection with the command line /usr/sbin pppd - /usr/sbin chat combination, and I usually get off with a Control-C. That gives me the "inappropriate ioctl error". However, if I use "/etc/ip-down"; no error appears. I suppose the proper way to get off is with ip-down, especially if you put your pppd as a background process. In 7.2 ip-down is a symlink to ip-up, and it does checking and housekeeping for the firewall scripts, etc. I use an older simpler ip-down script: #!/bin/sh # /etc/suseppp/ppp-down # terminate a ppp connection # if [ "$1" = "" ]; then DEVICE=ppp0 else DEVICE=$1 fi if [ -r /var/run/$DEVICE.pid ]; then kill -INT `cat /var/run/$DEVICE.pid` if [ ! "$?" = "0" ]; then rm -f /var/run/$DEVICE.pid echo "ERROR: Removed stale pid file" exit 1 fi echo "PPP link to $DEVICE terminated." exit 0 fi # # The ppp process is not running for ppp0 # echo "ERROR: PPP link is not active on $DEVICE" exit