Kernel Panic from pppd when device is disconnected

[James Mckenzie]

Here is a strange problem and I think it appeared with 2.6.11-rc3, but may happen with the 2.6.10 series of kernels too.

If I have pppd running and I disconnect the device (I am using a USB connection), the kernel panics and I cannot reconnect the device at the same /dev mount point nor can I kill pppd.  If I kill the pppd connection before removing the device, all is happy.  

How can I kill off pppd (I've tried SIGHUP, TERM and KILL) after this happens.  I don't like rebooting to get back the ability to communicate.


-- 
James McKenzie
Running Fedora Core 3 on a Thinkpad A22p with Software Suspend 2 and
ibm-acpi .1.