I just got a pptpd vpn server set up. I can log in from a windows box, but have serious configuration issues (I used a simple howto). I was hoping that someone can help with the problems (I'll list them from worst to least concerning).

1) Network traffic not routing to other machines.
I've tried modifying the sysctl.conf file as specified, but I'm not able to ping/access machines on the network. My pptpd server is 192.168.1.3 and I can ping that, but can't ping 192.168.1.101. (I shut down the firewalls to do this test - just to note this due to my next question). I'm really stuck on this one since this is why I set this up in the first place!

2) Can not access the pptpd server with the firewall up.
Maybe it's related? I've seen notes that you may have routing/access problems if the server connected does not have the same subnet. However, the machine I'm connecting with is assigned an ip of 192.168.1.200 (I can ping myself. ) Since my pptpd server is 192.168.1.3 I would assume this should work! What's really odd is I can't access the webserver on 192.168.1.3 unless the firewall is down, but the firewall allows 0/0 on port 80. I can't see why the firewall would be blocking me regardless of what address I'm getting assigned! Maybe it's something different.

3) I need a better authentication model. The chap-secrets file is a joke. I mean, clear-text! C'Mon! However, the only other option I've seen hits the other end of the spectrum, the whole AD server thing. I was hoping there would be a happy medium? PAM authentication or something? Maybe with a control list of who can/cannot log in? Is there any advice someone can give me on this?

Now, remember - I ask all these questions being quite a newb at this, so although any and all help is appreciated, make sure it's as simple as the walkthrough I followed to get to this point (which btw was as clear as mud) or I won't be able to follow along.

Much thanks in advance to any who can help with at least the first issue!

Problems 1 & 2 solved.

1) The pptpd.conf file only had a localip of the pptpd server. It needed to be a range of my network:
192.168.1.3-199
Make sure that you don't put remote addresses or it doesn't work. (e.g. I had 200 overlapping in both localip and remoteip and I couldn't connect to anything).

2) Definately a firewall issue. I set the following IPTable commands and it cleared it up:
#Allow forwarding from inside to out and vice versa
/sbin/iptables -A FORWARD -i $INTINT -s $LOCALNETWORK -j ACCEPT
/sbin/iptables -A FORWARD -o $INTINT -d $LOCALNETWORK -j ACCEPT

#Allow pptpd connections (port 1723)
/sbin/iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i $EXTINT -p TCP \
--sport $PUBLICPORTS --dport 1723 -j ACCEPT
/sbin/iptables -t nat -A OUTPUT -o $EXTINT -p 47 -j ACCEPT
/sbin/iptables -A OUTPUT -o $EXTINT -p 47 -j ACCEPT
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -i $EXTINT -p 47 -j ACCEPT
/sbin/iptables -A INPUT -i ppp+ \
-s $LOCALNETWORK -d $LOCALNETWORK -j ACCEPT
/sbin/iptables -A OUTPUT -o ppp+ \
-s $LOCALNETWORK -d $LOCALNETWORK -j ACCEPT
echo "PPTPD allowed"

3) Still working on it... any ideas out there?