I'm not sure if there are many/any postings out there like this one. It's not really a question but a solution for something that has take me a long time to figure out, partly because no one could tell me how to do it.

I have read posting here, and elsewhere, regarding pptp (point-to-point-tunneling-protocol) (provided by poptop server on linux) as well as ppp, in which the postings are trying to figure out routing, through the ppp connection. I read all of the articles I could find, all the books I bought, and I followed steps. Nothing worked! And after many months of hair pulling and cussing, and sleepless nights, I found the solution, and it was simple, so simple to the point that it entailed only one change, and to be honest I don't know whay this change made it work, as a matter of fact theoretically from my understanding and my reading, making this change should have taken me back a step, not moved me up one. But who am I to think about logic too much.

Well without further blabbering on my part, for those of you on this site looking, and those of you who found this on a search engine, here it is.

In the pptpd-options file or the ppp.options file ( as the case may be) you need to disable the proxyarp option. This could basically entail what I did which was comment out proxyarp, and then restart pptpd.

Now for those of you who are wondering why this shouldn't work (and I'm sure all of you care, right?) this is how I understand it.

proxyarp option allows the NIC on the server to be a proxy for the ppp connected computer, faking the local lan into believing that the ppp connected computer is right there with them. By disabling this you should be preventing the lan from seeing the ppp connected computer because the server is no longer suposed to be acting on behalf of the ppp computer.

Well all I can say in the end is, I had proxyarp enabled and I could see the connected computers in the network neighborhood on my windows box, but everytime I tried to access them I would get a not on network error. I tried using an ipchains rule with ip-up.d, tried messing with options, nada. I disable proxyarp, on a "what the hell I've been at it for months, what have I got to lose" whim, and boom I can acces them.

Well I hope this helps some of you, since I couldn't find this info anywhere, I decided it had to be put somewhere. good luck to all. Now its time to figure out why warcraft III won't recognize the lan game on the vpn connected comp. Then after that it's time to solve the xp home sp1 - samba, logon problem(another one that I can't find any solutions to) So much to do so little time. ttfn

--Alex

PS: I love this forum, unlike so many others I have come by no one here iever seems to be rude to anyone else, for posting problems with obvious solutions or even double posting, which can be annoying, just wanna say:

I love you guys, in a platonic sort of way

Thanks guys:

The problem I faced had been solved. Basically I followed the article http://pptpclient.sourceforge.net/routing.phtml. It realy is a nice one.
And I also decreased MTU to avoid MRU error from ppp.

What distro are you using. I can't seem to find ppp.options or pptpd-options. I found a options.pptp, but no reference to proxyarp

I am using debian sarge. However, the ppp configuration files are located in /etc/ppp on all distros I believe, as for pptpd-options you need to have poptop installed. poptop is application for a pptp server and pptpd is the daemon. you can find the source for poptop on sourceforge, ar check a place like rpmfind.net for a precompiled binary for your distro. the options.pptp is the options file for the pptp client on linux, you need the server poptop if you want to run your own pptp server.

--Alex

The solution for the XP/Samba is more than likely the "sign and seal" registry change needed.

Check out Mandrake User Samba PDC doco, it tells you how to make the change to the XP registry.

Thanks for the sign or seal suggestion but I already had that changed, then when I ran into problems I changed it back to 1 then nothing then I changed it to 0 again and nothing no such luck but thanks anyways.

--Alex