synapse writes:

>ok, i have a feeling i'm doing something pretty stupid, so, if you have a
>few minutes, read this and help me find my problem:
>problem: pppd works, but is not fully properly configured.
[snip]
>to disconnect, people to tell me to kill ppp, so i look it up in the
>process table and kill it. "kill -9 <pid-of-pppd>". i manually reset the
>modem by shutting it off and turning it back on.
[snip]
>what are the errors for? whatever they are, i assume they cause pppd not to

Just a SWAG guess, but since you killed pppd without doing a proper 
cleanup maybe the errors are trying to tell you it thinks pppd is still 
running but it can't find all the pieces?

>can anyone find a problem, or whatever, with my setup? (if i missed

Have you tired just using the scripts that Paul wrote and Bill posted to 
his account on puma? They worked just fine for me for both bringing up my 
ISP connection and bringing it down clean, and my ISP setup is very much 
like yours - dynamic IP, multiple modem pools, multiple terminal servers, 
etc.

-bob