Changing interface names in pppd, where is the ifname option?

[Josef Wolf]

On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 10:38:41PM -0000, Cameron Hutchison wrote:
> Josef Wolf <jw at raven.inka.de> writes:
> 
> >What happened to this option?  Is there any other way to get stable
> >[ppp] interface names in ubuntu?
> 
> The pppd config has a "unit" directive (see the pppd man page) to
> specify which number to use after the "ppp" in the interface name.

Yeah, I see.  And here, it starts getting wired.  Opensuse's man page 
(for pppd-2.4.5, which has the ifname option) suggests that this is
not reliable:

  unit num
     Sets  the  ppp  unit number (for a ppp0 or ppp1 etc interface
     name) for outbound connections.  If the unit is already in use a
     dynamically allocated will be used.

So there is no guarantee that this unit is actually used.

OTOH, intrepid's man page (pppd-2.4.4, without ifname option) don't
have this last sentence.

This looks to me like they have noticed that the unit option is not
reliable and they have added the ifname option in 2.4.5.

Anybody knows which version will be included in 9.04 and whether it
supports the ifname option?