Damn kppp or my isp? exit status 19

I have been using knoppix 3.5 hard drive install for about 3-4 months now with no problems ( just some fine tuning )
I run a lot of distros (too many ) and had run knoppix 3.3 before for about a year.
I always seem to eventually run into kppp or pppd problems. So tonight when I booted into knoppix
I was not suprised but aggravated to find that I couldn't get a connection. I just kept getting
exit status 19 from kppp. I know that means failed to authenticate but noauth is selected.
The issue here is that it was working fine for at least 3 months. I have a dial up and don't do upgades
nor have I messed with my /etc/ppp files. I got the same error message with the 3.6 live cd including kppp details as follows:
"couldn't write to /var/log/syslog.ppp /var/log/syslog /var/log/message"
I got it running on knoppix 3.6 ( running from cd ) by changing the permissions on those files.
Does anyone know what could cause this to happen? And even more importantly how to prevent it from happening again???

Follow up: Did I mention how aggravating this is :evil: Oh well just need to let it go.
I can not get my hard drive install of knoppix to dial out sucessfully ppp is a mess!
I'm in debian woody r1. I can't even get knoppix to work by copying and repalcing files from a working system :cry:

I trashed all the files in /etc/ppp that are edited by pppconfig e.g. pap-secrets & others too ( I'm too tired
to remember them all-sorry) and when I ran pppconfig after deleteing my kppp config too I just did touch to create empty files
when pppconfig complained. It's working now...aggravating though and I wish I knew why it happens????