Re: pptp-based vpn
Quoting martin McCormick (martin.m@suddenlink.net):
> David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> writes:
> > I think there's a fourth field missing there.
>
> Correct! Please read on.
>
> >
> > Anyway, what I just did is: install pptp-linux (which pulls in ppp)
> > and typed:
> > # pptpsetup --create work --server ukvpn.ufreevpn.com --username
> > ufreevpn.com --password free --encrypt --start
>
> Thank you! Thanks to your answer, I was able to duplicate what
> you did.
>
> This system does not run a GUI desktop. It has enough RAM
> but it runs a 600-MHZ Pentium and I suspect that gnome would be a
> little slow. I also remember reading that ppptpsetup was a GUI
> application so I just figured it wouldn't run, here.
>
> I do have a gnome system but it runs rather hot so I only
> fire it up when needed and turn it off later as it makes a pretty
> good heater in Winter and an even better one in Summer.
>
> I was going to run ppptpsetup there and see what it
> generated, but I then discovered that ppptpsetup is actually on
> this system that has no gnome so I just ran it from root and
> figured the worst thing that would happen would be a message
> about no X display but it ran, producing a message that it had
> succeeded and was using the same two DNS's your running of the
> script printed.
>
> In less than a second, it configured everything and I
> appear to have a working VPN.
>
> Many thanks. It looks like my chap-secrets file was
> totally wrong or at least it was missing that 4TH field where
> there is now a * but the new vpn file named "work" it created
> looks like I had gotten that part right.
I would be interested to know if I've missed any tricks, but I have
had to do the following after pptpsetup -create...
# ip route change default dev ppp0
so that all the traffic goes to ppp0 (instead of wlan0 as normally).
...and the following after pptpsetup --delete closes it down:
# ip route change default via 192.168.1.1 dev wlan0
# for j in "$(ip -o route | grep ppp0 | cut -d\ -f 1)" ; do ip route delete "$j" ; done
# for j in "$(ip -o route | grep 'via 192.168.1.1' | grep -v default | cut -d\ -f 1)" ; do ip route delete "$j" ; done
The other wrinkle I've found is that it's worth always running
# pptpsetup --delete foo
(ignoring any error message) before
# pptpsetup -create foo
because that makes sure that /etc/ppp/chap-secrets is clean with
respect to foo. It might not matter for VPNs where the password never
changes, but I think chap-secrets is scanned only as far as the first
match, so a stale password will hide the new one that pptpsetup -create
adds to the end of the file.
One other thing: it would be nice to be able to run get-iplayer
through the tunnel, but I haven't managed it. It gets connected
but no bytes are ever delivered to the local file.
Cheers,
David.
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