Module ppp_generic not found

Rocky Linux General
1

Hi, I successfully moved from CentOS7 to Rocky Linux Rocky Linux release 8.7. Kudos to the team!
I’m experiencing something weird: the ppp_generic module is not available, leading to issues with some older VPNs.

pppd call somevpn
Couldn't open the /dev/ppp device: No such device or address
pppd: Please load the ppp_generic kernel module.

then trying to load module:

modprobe ppp_generic
modprobe: FATAL: Module ppp_generic not found in directory /lib/modules/4.18.0-425.10.1.el8_7.x86_64

Is this supposed to be? I made sure to have the latest updates. Also it seems like it’s correctly compiled as module:

grep -i "ppp" /boot/config-4.18.0-425.10.1.el8_7.x86_64
CONFIG_PPP=m
CONFIG_PPP_BSDCOMP=m
CONFIG_PPP_DEFLATE=m
CONFIG_PPP_FILTER=y
CONFIG_PPP_MPPE=m
CONFIG_PPP_MULTILINK=y
CONFIG_PPPOATM=m
CONFIG_PPPOE=m
CONFIG_PPPOL2TP=m
CONFIG_PPP_ASYNC=m
CONFIG_PPP_SYNC_TTY=m
CONFIG_HDLC_PPP=m
CONFIG_ISDN_PPP=y
CONFIG_ISDN_PPP_VJ=y
CONFIG_IPPP_FILTER=y
# CONFIG_ISDN_PPP_BSDCOMP is not set

thanks
nicola

2

SOLVED

Kernel modules must be explicitly installed with

dnf install kernel-modules
3

One would expect that a kernel is installed by installing package kernel because it pulls in the core and modules subpackages.

[root@alma9 ~]# dnf rq --installonly --latest-limit=1
kernel-0:5.14.0-162.12.1.el9_1.x86_64
kernel-core-0:5.14.0-162.12.1.el9_1.x86_64
kernel-modules-0:5.14.0-162.12.1.el9_1.x86_64

[root@alma9 ~]# dnf rq --requires --resolve kernel
kernel-core-0:5.14.0-162.12.1.el9_1.x86_64
kernel-modules-0:5.14.0-162.12.1.el9_1.x86_64

[root@alma9 ~]# dnf rq --requires --resolve kernel-core
bash-0:5.1.8-6.el9_1.x86_64
coreutils-0:8.32-32.el9.x86_64
coreutils-single-0:8.32-32.el9.x86_64
dracut-0:057-13.git20220816.el9.x86_64
linux-firmware-0:20220708-127.el9.noarch
systemd-0:250-12.el9_1.1.i686
systemd-0:250-12.el9_1.1.x86_64
systemd-udev-0:250-12.el9_1.1.x86_64

[root@alma9 ~]# dnf rq --requires --resolve kernel-modules
bash-0:5.1.8-6.el9_1.x86_64
kernel-core-0:5.14.0-162.12.1.el9_1.x86_64

As shown above, the modules does require the core too, but the core can install without the other two.

I’ve seen that in some conditions only the kernel-core and kernel-modules are installed, but yours is the first, where only the kernel-core was present. How did you “move” from el7 to el8?

4

I honestly don’t remember since it was some months ago, but I followed the official indications to move from CentOS7 to Rocky Linux 8. Cannot find notes about that either, sorry!

5

No worries.

I’m quite sure those are:

  1. Do fresh, clean install of Rocky
  2. Apply appropriate configuration
  3. Transfer user data (from backup, etc)

In other words, Rocky does not support in-place conversion from different major version, like 7 → 8.