On Thu, Aug 12, 2004 at 08:18:28PM +0100, Nuno Silva wrote:

Hi!

With 2.6.8-rc4-bk1 I get "Aug 12 17:33:10 puma kernel:
unregister_netdevice: waiting for ppp0 to become free. Usage count = 1"
in the logs after pppd exit.

Also, the box won't reboot and print that message forever in the
console. sysrq-U && sysrq-R did it :-)

The last version I tried was 2.6.8-rc2-bk11 and, wrt this prob, is
running fine. So, the problem is in that window and the changelog for
rc4 mentions something about ppp:
http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v2.6/testing/ChangeLog-2.6.8-rc4

If someone requires more information or tests feel free to ask!

I saw this too, with 2.6.7-rc3-mm1.
I have discovered that it happens because of idle TCP socket
holds a reference to a network device.
After killing associated process, device was freed immediately.

~
:wq
                                        With best regards, 
                                           Vladimir Savkin.