Hello everyone,

I just installed a new installation of SuSE 9.2. Everything is working great except for the PPTP client. I've run through the pptp-command script as I did in SuSE 9.0, but it never connects to my server. It just ends with a "modem hangup" and a timeout.

The pptp server is working fine if I connect with a Windows XP client, and works from a SuSE 9.0 client. Anyone have a solution to this? I even tried turning off the SuSE firewall.

Thanks for any help...

I never had any luck using scripts; but I did get a VPN tunnell working with pptp-php-gtk. Even after the tunnel was setup there I couldn't get the PPTP client to use it, so I've just been going back to pptp-php-gtk whenever I need to connect. I don't know what the difference between the two is, or why one would work and not the other. You will have to turn off the firewall, or play with iptables to get the GRE packets through. I also still have to run everything as root for it to work properly, setuid on the pptp-php-gtk program didn't work for me. If you get things working with scripts or commands, let me know what you did. I'd like to get mine working in a more streamlined manner, but I got tired of messing with it.

I can't even get pptp-php-gtk working. It gives me the same problem as the provided PPTP scripts. I used the docs at http://pptpclient.sourceforge.net/howto-suse-92.phtml to download and configure a PPTP client. It just sits and finally times out.

I really think it's just something weird in SuSE 9.2. I can boot to my Windows partition and get through to the VPN server fine. Did you need to do anything special to get pptp-php-gtk working?

I don't recall having to do anything weird to get pptp-gtk working. Is the software running, but the connection just times out? Are you getting any messages back from the server at all? If not, check your firewall and make sure it is turned off. If you're not sure, try the following:
# iptables -I INPUT -s servername (or ip) -p all -j ACCEPT
this should let all incoming traffic from your server through. This rule won't "stick", it'll disappear when you reboot, and in my case whenver you close the VPN. I don't know enough about iptables & boot scripts to set things up permantly.

Thanks! That worked. How come turning off the firewall isn't sufficient? Technically, I should be accepting ALL on the INPUT chain with the firewall off. Right?

Yes, but the firewall may not have been completely "off". You can turn it on when configuring a network device in YaST. For instance there is a check box for "External Firewall Interface" when configuring a DSL device. If this is checked, it turns on the firewall. So it is possible something else was turning on your firewall. I've found the best way to check, is turn off the firewall, close down YaST, restart YaST, and then look at the firewall settings again. If it is really off, your only choice should be to turn it back on. So are you scripts working now, or just pptp-gtk?

Unfortunately, now I can't get either one to work. I didn't make any system changes, and I even tried allowing all on the INPUT chain...

Are you behind a router or switch that may be dropping your packets? The other thing is to make sure the entry into the iptables is inserted at the begining, and not appended to the end. After that, I'm not sure what to check.

well, I'm on wireless behind a linksys router. It was working the other day after my last post about it working with your suggested IPTABLES rule. Then, I tried again tonight to see if I could get the command line version working.

Now neither one works. I turned off the firewall, ran iptables -F to flush all the rules, then appended the allow all on the INPUT as you suggested.

Anyway, it's still, not working

OK, so I found an inconvenient "workaround". If I open a VPN connection from another computer on my network (a windows box), then close it, my SuSE 9.2 laptop (via wireless) will connect to my VPN server right away.

UGH! I never had these issues with 9.0