ubuntu-users Digest, Vol 48, Issue 215

[Chris Jeffries]

(Please ignore the --- in the following message. They are there for a
reason, but it is not for human perception purposes.)

I wonder if anyone has got V---P---N up and running on Ubuntu. If so,
perhaps you could share your experience or point me somewhere where you
already shared it, because I am struggling.

My situation is described below

I am buying from a service provider and it works fine on Windows but I
have failed to make it work on Ubuntu. The error message is 

  Could not start the V---P---N connection 'BananaPPTP'
  due to a connection error.
  VPN Connection failed
  
My provider is www.bananav---p---n.com (remove the ---)

I chose
   PPTP Tunnel (elsewhere referred to as Windows V---P---N (P--P--T--P))
rather than OpenV--P--N Client or vpnc 

QUESTION: did I choose right.

The settings I am using are as follows:

Under Connection
  used same IP address as in Windows
Under Authentication
  None of the boxes (Authenticat Peer, Refuse EAP, refuse CHAP, Refuse
MS CHAP) is checked 
  (I also tried it with all refused except MS CHAP, and again with all
refused except CHAP)
Compression and encryption
  No optons checked except Enable stateful MPPE
PPP Options
  Nothing set except thwe following (all defaults)
     MTU 1416
     MRU 1416
     lcp echo failure 10
     lcp echo interval 10 
Routing
  Peer DNS through tunnel is checked
  No restrictions on which addresses to use VPN for
  
QUESTION: is something wrong with these settings
 
The service provider sent me this in response to my query:
 
According to the sevrver log, it is failing due to the authentication
method. 
Try changing it to CHAP or PAP.

Also if you want to connect with L2TP the sharedkey for IPSEC is:
******* (obfuscated by me)

QUESTION can I use PAP and if so, how. Can I use L2TP and again, if so
how.

I am not keen to change my service provider since I have a 6 month
contract running. But perhaps the 
only choice is to go with someone who supports Linux (even Ubuntu)
specifically). My current
provider seems to be able to support Windows very well, but support for
anything esle seems a bit
' un sure footed '.