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Date:      Wed, 7 Oct 1998 12:31:22 +0930
From:      Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>
To:        Eivind Eklund <eivind@yes.no>, doc@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: Dos and Don'ts
Message-ID:  <19981007123122.O27781@freebie.lemis.com>
In-Reply-To: <19981006083809.00946@follo.net>; from Eivind Eklund on Tue, Oct 06, 1998 at 08:38:09AM %2B0200
References:  <19981006071237.02443@follo.net> <19981006155341.C27781@freebie.lemis.com> <19981006083809.00946@follo.net>

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On Tuesday,  6 October 1998 at  8:38:09 +0200, Eivind Eklund wrote:
> On Tue, Oct 06, 1998 at 03:53:41PM +0930, Greg Lehey wrote:
>> On Tuesday,  6 October 1998 at  7:12:38 +0200, Eivind Eklund wrote:
>>> Dos and Don'ts of FreeBSD
>>> -------------------------
>>>
>>> DON'T run pppd unless you either
>>> 	(a) already have a working setup, or
>>> 	(b) absolutely need the 2% reduction of CPU usage it will give
>>> 	    you.
>>
>> Why this?  With all respect for Brian, I've found pppd to be more
>> reliable.
>
> Because it often lead to a large amount of pain (in setup), especially
> when somebody get the idea that they want to use NAT.  In the cases
> where there are problems with iij-ppp, my impression is it usually get
> fixed pretty quickly (personally, I've never had a problem except when
> I've been hacking the code myself, so I can't give more than a
> second-hand impression).

OK.  I had to go through installing both in painful detail for my
book.  Everybody has always said "don't use Kernel PPP, it's painful",
but I didn't find it so.  In fact, the difficulty of installation is
about equal.  What *is* deficient is the documentation.

I had some problems with user PPP a little over a year ago: when the
line dropped, it was impossible to reconnect.  This turned out to be a
problem with the other end, but it showed up a bug in user PPP: it
didn't honour the redial interval or count.  On one occasion the line
dropped at about 2 am, and by the time I found out it had clocked up
about $135 worth of phone calls.  I moved (quickly and painlessly) to
kernel PPP, and since it works, I've been using it ever since.  Note
also that most PPP problems reported to -questions are for user PPP,
not kernel PPP.  This is almost certainly because most people try user
PPP, but it does suggest that this rule is unnecessary.

Basically, I think there are some things here that tend to the
religious.  How about this one:

DON'T use vi or ee, use Emacs, the One True Editor.  ee is wimpy, and
	  vi is impossible to use.

The sendmail/exim rule definitely belongs in the same category.

>>> DON'T send questions about anything (beyond the exceptions noted
>>> 	above) to any mailing list you are not a member of and have
>>> 	read for at least two days.
>>
>> This sounds funny, like you want them to be a member and not have read
>> it for two days.
>
> Is this better?
>
> DON'T send questions about anything (beyond the exceptions noted
> 	above) to any mailing list you have not read at least two days
> 	of traffic from.  Yes, this implies you should be or have been
> 	a member.

I suppose so.  We have a policy that non-members can post to
-questions; how would you factor that in ("you're allowed to, but it's
better not to").

Greg
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