[Techtalk] stuck setting up vpn YAY! Success!

[mgmonza at iceland.freeshell.org]

SH,

I did follow your suggestion with regard to using OpenVPN.

The OpenVPN documentation was pretty opaque, but with a little faith (and 
having just finished two of Andy Weir's optimstic nerd-protagonist books) 
to plug the gaps in the erroneous/non-existent documentation on the VPN 
provider's site, I did get the thing going.

The vpn provider's PPTP wiki/tutorial just didn't work.  It seems to be 
outdated or just plain wrong.  I took the only file they gave me, moved it 
to what seemed like a logical place in my Debian system, the openvpn 
client config file, renamed it to end in .ovpn and started openvpn using 
that filename.

Traceroute and ifconfig seem to show it worked.  Thank you for 
recommending using OpenVPN instead.

MG

On Wed, 30 Mar 2022, SH via Techtalk wrote:

> Date: Wed, 30 Mar 2022 21:50:40 +0200
> From: SH via Techtalk <techtalk at linuxchix.org>
> Reply-To: SH <s23ad at yahoo.com.au>
> To: techtalk at linuxchix.org
> Subject: Re: [Techtalk] stuck setting up vpn
> 
> Hello,
>
> I'm not an expert on PPTP so can't really help. But out of curiosity, is 
> there any reason why OpenVPN client can’t be used for this connection? 
> Especially since a .ovpn file is being provided?
>
> Kind regards,
> SH
>
> mgmonza at sverige.sdf.org wrote on 24/3/22 15:22:
>> Hello, all,
>> 
>> Even though this list hasn't been active in a while, I thought I'd give 
>> this a shot just in case anyone might be able to help.
>> 
>> I just registered for a vpn but can't get it to connect.  It may be that 
>> this just doens't work server-side:Â  it's a volunteer, very old linux 
>> organization with somewhat spotty support.  If not, I was hoping someone 
>> on this list could see something I'm missing.
>> 
>> I followed their directions to do these steps:
>> 
>> - created theirpptp file in /etc/ppp/peers
>> 
>> - edited the /etc/ppp/chap-secrets file to add their vpn address and my 
>> password that had been generated by the setup process on the server side
>> 
>> - added a route to the vpn using 'route add'
>> 
>> in sheer desperation, added this from a redhat specific page:
>> - modprobe nf_conntrack_pptp
>> 
>> but when I tried the next step:
>> 
>> sudo pppd call theirpptp
>> 
>> the connection closed immediately
>> 
>> pinging and traceroute to their vpn work fine.
>> 
>> I'm on a redhat/CentOS platform with selinux and tried this with setenforce 
>> on and off.  No difference.
>> 
>> varions system error messages are:
>> 
>> The synchronous pptp option is NOT activated
>> warn[open_inetsock:pppt_callmgr.c:329]: connect:Â  Connection refused
>> 
>> fatal[callmgr_main:pptp_callmg.c:127]: Could not open control conection to 
>> xxx.xxx.xx.x
>> 
>> One other question:Â  where should the .ovpn file be saved so that it can 
>> be found by the programs that need it?
>> 
>> Any help would be very much appreciated.
>> 
>> MG
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
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