Installing and configuring PPTP VPN server on lenny
If you would like to setup a Virtual Private Network (VPN) for Windows clients, PPTP is a great choice. It's easy to set up on the server and you don't need any additional software for the Windows clients to connect.
1. Install the required packages
apt-get install pptpd
2. Configure the IP range assigned to clients (pico /etc/pptpd.conf)
localip 192.168.1.2
remoteip 192.168.1.10-20
Using this config the clients are assigned any IP address between and including 192.168.1.10 and 192.168.1.20.
3. Restart the PPTP daemon
/etc/init.d/pptpd restart
4. Create a user allowed to connect (pico /etc/ppp/chap-secrets)
user1 pptpd secretpassword *
Passwords are not encrypted. This allows the a user with the username: user1 and the password: secretpassword to login from any ip address.
5. Enable IP forward at startup to allow the VPN clients to connect to the server's local network. (pico /etc/sysctl.conf)
net.ipv4.ip_forward=1
Also run this command to activate the IP forward instantly:
echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
6. Create a routing rule to allow the VPN clients to route network traffic through the server.
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE
Read this tutorial to learn how to create iptables rules on startup:
Loading iptables rules on startup
February 15th, 2011 - 02:59
I’m not too sure what the “POSTROUTING” and “MASQUERADE” in “iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE” should be set to.
Care to explain?
April 9th, 2011 - 21:01
thanks the quick howto and works
April 9th, 2011 - 21:02
DLS without that iptable rule the clients cant connect to the internet
April 30th, 2011 - 16:11
how can we monitor PPTP Users and the traffic and bandwidth …. everything…?
August 11th, 2011 - 05:18
/etc/init.d/pptpd restart
-bash: /etc/init.d/pptpd: Permission denied
August 18th, 2011 - 04:14
W H, do it under root
August 22nd, 2011 - 13:34
Hello there. Thanks for very nice PPTP VPN manual. I got just one question. IS it possible to monitor users traffic on VPN ? Give users quota for VPN ? Problem is on my server is users making too mutch traffic and i need to stop this. Thanks for any help. lu
October 13th, 2011 - 10:46
Lukas, use tc utility with htb tool to shape the traffic. Examine lartc.org please.
And you can monitor the usage with snmp + mrtg. I don’t know if there is some tool out of the box for doing everything this.