Hi Friends,

I want to connect to my office's windows VPN server.

In windows, I configure a VPN connection by entering the Public IP of the VPN server, username, password, domain... a few next next... and finish!

I want something similar in Linux, which I can configure with the above information.

I hate pptpconfig(crude look and eats up my resolv.conf). I see VPN clients like Open VPN and Openswan, but I don't know how to configure them. I don't understand the terms of networking and security like IPsec, tunnel etc.

Can someone help me configure Open VPN or anything similar client, when I have only the below information?

IP of the VPN Server
Username
Password
Domain Name

Thanks in advance.

--Dipu

Use Linux - Enjoy Freedom!

Dipu,

If you are using a distribution that is using Network Manager there are additional packages that will allow it to use VPN connections. Tell us what distro you are using and maybe we all can help you further.

Well I am not sure about the network manager and associated packages. However, I do know that you need to know what type of VPN your office uses, this will dictate what clients and packages you can use to connect with. i.e. if they use PPTP you will need a client that uses the pptp protocol. If you don't like text files you can see if anyone has a GUI front end for pptpconfig, or see if there are other clients, but I don't know of any at this time. We do need to know more from you though like what distro, what kind of VPN, etc....

Hi Thanks for your replies. I don't think distro should be a question because I can install open source packages in any distro and they all will work in same way. Anyways I use Ubuntu Hardy & Fedora Core 8.

Talking about what type of VPN - I don't really know much about it. The VPN server is a windows 2003 server at our remote office. It looks like a "Client to LAN" connection because once the user connects to VPN in windows, he accesses the remote network resources as well as local LAN. If I right click the network icon, I see he's been assigned a remote IP by the VPN server.

It's seamless to configure the VPN in windows and also I had configured pptpconfig in linux long ago which worked. But every time I connect by pptpconfig, my resolv.conf was replaced by remote network's dns IPs so I was facing issues to access local resources for the time I'm connected. Also pptpconfig is very old and has not been developed from long time. I am talking about pptpconfig gui one. I don't know how to configure in command line.

Regarding protocol, should we think its PPTP because pptpconfig worked?

I don't mind doing things in command line or in GUI as long as they are easily configurable. Personally I prefer command line but may be other users in my office will like a GUI one.

I hope this much information will be helpful to guide me further, waiting for your reply.


--Dipu

Use Linux - Enjoy Freedom!

Anyone up with a solution?


--Dipu

Use Linux - Enjoy Freedom!

This is absolutely a pptp connection and if you don't like the pptp client you can try a search and see if there are any other pptp application out there. I don't know how old the pptpconfig app is, but I think the pptp client is pretty current. As far as your resolv.conf goes I don't know if there is a way around it. I know you can alter the configuration to make all non VPN traffic go out your regular internet connection instead of to VPN server then out to the internet. try lookig up pptp clients as a start and see what is out there. Good luck, let us know if you find a soulution you like.