HOWTO: Connect to a Microsoft PPTP VPN

[jpastore]

I didn't Nortel had that. that must have come from that purchase of ascend like 10 years ago.

I would contact them and see if they have a linux client to connect into the office.

[dlogic]

I did some snooping around on the net, specifically Nortel's website. They do have a linux client, however, a license is required for it; otherwise, they have a 30-day trial. I may need to end up calling my company's tech support and inquiry whether our company has the Linux client available. I was hoping I wouldn't have to go that route, but it seems there's no other way. Since my company relies heavily on the Windows environment, it may be safe to assume they will not have the linux client - I may be SOL at that point.

[jpastore]

or talk to someone about expensing it or seeing if you can trade up your license....

[turbohor]

This works for me

If you are having problem connecting to a Windows 2003 server's VPN server, try this:

In VPN Configuration panel:

in "Authentication" tab, check "refuse EAP"

in "Compression and Encryption" tab, check both "Require MPPE encryption" and "Require 128 bit MPPE encryption".


That did the trick for me!

[jpastore]

I resolved to reloading feisty. Evidently doing a distribution upgrade was the problem, but out of the box pptp was fine using the recommend settings described in this forum.

[mb01915]

There is a problem when you make a successful connection that network manager blows out the contents of your resolv.conf when you disconnect it puts it back the way it's supposed to be...

it's a known bug that hasn't been assigned to be resolved yet and I wish someone would take the time to look at it...

in the mean time I made a copy of the resolv.conf and I just run a quick shell script to copy it over when I connect to deal with it...

jpastore - I understand the concept of what you are doing but I do not have a clue what to do or how to do it. Would you mind providing more detail and help the clueless?

[jpastore]

Well open your favorite editor, I prefer vim but if you are a beginner I would use gedit.

contents of the file would look like this:

#!/bin/bash

cp /etc/resolv.conf.pptp_backup /etc/resolv.conf

save this shell script to /usr/bin called fix_pptp_dns.sh

then open up a terminal (like gnome-terminal) and do the following:

1. create the resolv.conf.pptp_backup be surfe you are not connected to the vpn or it will defeat the purpose of this exercise.

sudo cp /etc/resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf.pptp_backup

2. allow the shell script we create to execute

sudo chmod 700 /usr/bin/fix_pptp_dns.sh

for more information on what chmod does and what the numbers mean I would read this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chmod
I don't want to get off topic but if you are a beginner you should take the time to understand each aspect of what you are doing. God forbid you run across a how-to with misinformation and trash stuff on your system...

then create a shortcut on your desktop to run this shell script

1. right click on your desktop
2. select create launcher
3. file in form: Name = "Fix PPTP DNS", command = "gksudo /usr/bin/fix_pptp_dns.sh", comment="Jon showed me how to fix DNS because someone on the network-manager project has been slacking", feel free to choose an icon.

now after you connect you can just run this icon on your desktop and it should work.

if you need to use internal DNS for your company for some reason I would edit the /etc/resolv.conf.pptp_backup file while you are disconnected, or you will have to disconnect and reconnect to test.

sudo gedit /etc/resolv.conf.pptp_backup

you should see 1 or 2 line that look like:

nameserver some.ipAddress.for.DNS
nameserver some.ipAddress.for.secondaryDNS

change those lines to your internal nameserver(s) and save.

then reconnect and test.

hope this helps...

now if only I could figure out why it's giving me a segmentation fault all of a sudden I would be happy...this was working and now it's not...maybe I need to roll back an update?

[jpastore]

Also would like to point out that I think I found the culprit as to why DNS is shot post vpn connections...

while trying to troubleshoot my segmentation fault I came across:
http://sujitpal.blogspot.com/2007/05...-lifebook.html

which mentioned files in: /etc/ppp/ip-up.d

there's 2 files in here that rework the resolv.conf:
0000usepeerdns
0dns-up

I'm not a bash scripting expert, (I only automate basic stuff using bash scripting) but from what I can tell this what's broken. When I figure it out I'll post another reply with how I fixed it to avoid the above instructions...but before I can fix it I need to figure out this seg fault... =(

[rikalaj]

Is the bug fixed or when it's going to be fixed?

I've been thinking, reading forums and trying different ways to make vpn work with static ip until I found out that it's a bug.

[jpastore]

This is a bug that has not been resolved yet. I'll look for a link to the network-manager bug so we can track it from here as well. I don't have it readily available since reloading feisty seemed to fix the problem...doing a dist-upgrade was not clean and the source of my initial problems