wahlau's online hut

so far i only have one problem after upgrading to Ubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex - my VPN via pptp stopped working. It is actually a known issue since months, but so far only tweaks and hacks available from many people. Ubuntu has not released any patch for pptp/Network Manager... funny, but i have no idea why.

i myself tried many times because sometimes i need to connect to my office's network from home. After numerous attempts i finally realised a few things. Firstly - never try to test your vpn connection in your own network. Well, the system cannot assign you the same IP address twice :)

Secondly, pay attention to the /var/log/syslog and other messages/hints (a quick one for you who just want the solution). They will provide you good information that can reduce different possibilities and doubts. Thirdly, ask the community. I realise in ubuntu-forum and launchpad itself there are various discussions and hints how one can overcome this problem. Do bear in mind that we might also have different pptp server implementations, so you might not have one setting that suit all cases.

Anyway, the general solution is to only enter username and no password. Don't worry about this because NetworkManager applet will prompt you for the password. At the Advanced tab of the VPN configuration you should deselect all the other authentication methods except the one your vpn server uses. What worked for me is as shown in the screenshot below:

another tip i found is to set "refuse-eap" option to yes. This is not available here, but one can either insert that into the gconf-editor, or as how i did it - i enter the option directly in /etc/ppp/options as mentioned here. I did that and finally i can connect via pptp to my department's VPN. The gconf way did not worked for me yesterday, but i believe it should.

Let's hope that Ubuntu will soon release a patch that automatically solves these issues. Til then, happy hacking.