doesn't anybody use tunnelling / vpn?

[will trillich <will@serensoft.com>]

AAUGH! NOBODY seems to be tunneling anywhere. i must be alone...
my inquiries about vpn and tunnelling have met with deafening silence.

am i the only person trying to get these going? it seems like such
a no-brainer tool that i'd expect LOTS of us to be using vpn
(or trying to get it running).

or is there a club meeting somewhere that gathers to laugh at all
my ignorant posts on the issue? (on the other hand, maybe y'all
are waiting for me to finally munch my bloodied head through the
other end so you can ask me how i did it? expect a looong wait.)

i'm going NUTS here... help! pointers would be handy, but i've
found many documents hither and yon on the 'net and NONE have been
turnkey... there's always some obscure obstacle or error message
that i have no clue as to the meaning behind it.

is there a debianized tunnel module i can get running?
	not tunnelv
	tried iptunnel
	got pptpd
	moving on to something that makes sense to me (and works)

--

i've tried tunnelv, ipip, ipsec, several others. shotgun/machine-gun
approach: apt-get install, try, be baffled by errors or no results, try
another. no hits. dead ends everywhere, without understanding
anything of the messages behind them.

even with
http://www.linuxdoc.org/HOWTO/Adv-Routing-HOWTO-5.html
i'm not having ANY success.

# iptunnel add TEST mode gre remote 208.33.90.85 local 208.7.139.219 ttl 255
# ip addr add 192.168.0.1 dev TEST
Cannot send dump request: Connection refused

what's that mean?

# lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by
nbd                    13104   0  (unused)
lockd                  31120   1  (autoclean)
sunrpc                 52432   1  (autoclean) [lockd]
serial                 19568   0  (autoclean)
netlink_dev             1552   0  (unused)
ethertap                2336   0  (unused)
rtl8139                11520   1 
ipv6                   92464  -1 
ipip                    5168   0 
ip_masq_user            2544   0  (unused)
ip_masq_raudio          2944   0  (unused)
ip_gre                  6176   1 
ip_masq_cuseeme         1120   0  (unused)
ip_masq_autofw          2448   0  (unused)
ip_masq_irc             1600   0  (unused)
ip_masq_portfw          2528   0  (unused)
ip_masq_mfw             3152   0  (unused)
ip_masq_ftp             2464   0  (unused)
ne2k-pci                4080   1 
8390                    6048   0  [ne2k-pci]
unix                   10224  21  (autoclean)

some dox i've seen mention needing the "new_tunnel.o" module.
where do i get that? i haven't found it in modconf...

help? help. help!