I'm not sure how you're tracking what's doing what, but I can offer this: 
I don't have the persistant option to pppd working yet - that is, the man 
page claims that pppd will renegotiate when the connections is dropped, 
but it doesnt'.

Anway, when my connections drop, and I look at my pppd syslog file, I see 
continuous attempts from timed to use the line, and fail. It doesn't 
figure out that the connection is gone. Are you monitoring your pppd 
syslog entries?

-1LT Avram Dorfman
HQ USAF Network Management
permanent email address: avram@pobox.com

"Methodological observation of the sociometrical behavior tendencies of 
prematurated isolates indicates that a causal relationship exists between 
groundward tropism and lachrimatory behavior forms."

On Mon, 15 Jul 1996, Andrew Brennan wrote:

>    Ok, the demand-dial part works fine.  [Thanks Paul!!]  Unfortunately, I
>    appear to have some daemon that is keeping me from dropping my connx &
>    will re-attach if I have dropped my connx.  (at least it's consistent)
> 
>    I've tried killing daemons that look possible, sendmail dies when pppd
>    kills the connx.  Root is the only crontab entry and there's nothing in
>    there to do this.  I've been trying to get tcpdump (and the like) to 
>    track activity on the interface, lsof to see who has which devices open
>    and I'm stumped.  Anyone see anything (below) that might be the problem
>    with my config?
> 
>    Here's the process list:
> 
> gumby# ps ax
>   PID TT  STAT      TIME COMMAND
>     0 ??  DLs    0:00.10 (swapper)
>     1 ??  IWs    0:00.37 /sbin/init
>     2 ??  DL     0:04.47 (pagedaemon)
>    44 ??  IWs    0:00.20 portmap
>    52 ??  Is     0:02.27 syslogd
>    55 ??  IWs    0:00.37 timed
>    69 ??  Ss     0:04.67 update
>    71 ??  Is     0:01.10 cron
>    75 ??  Ss     0:00.56 routed -q
>    81 ??  IWs    0:00.94 inetd
>   271 ??  IWs    0:00.66 pppd
>   280 ??  IWs    0:00.30 sendmail: accepting connections (sendmail)
>   154 p0  Ss     0:05.25 -sh (csh)
>   288 p0  R+     0:00.26 ps -ax
>   155 p1  IWs    0:02.14 -sh (csh)
>   273 p1  S+     0:07.70 telnet aab
>   156 p2  IWs+   0:00.90 -sh (csh)
>    96 e0  IWs    0:06.23 -csh (csh)
>   153 e0  S+     0:59.36 /usr/local/bin/dt
> 
> gumby# netstat -rn
> Routing tables
> 
> Internet:
> Destination      Gateway            Flags     Refs     Use    Mtu
> Interface
> default          192.54.238.91      UG          2     2272      -  ppp0
> 127.0.0.1        127.0.0.1          UH          1        0      -  lo0
> 192.54.238.3     127.0.0.1          UGHS        1       24      -  lo0
> 192.54.238.91    192.54.238.3       UH          1        0      -  ppp0
> 
>    ... other than those two and perhaps the logfiles (which I'll send 
>    pieces of to anyone interested) I am clueless as to where the problem
>    might be.  Help?
> 
>    andrew.  (brennan@allegheny.edu)
> 
>