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I need to get my fix of British talk shows, but in order to do that, I need to use a PPTP VPN.
How do I connect to a PPTP server on Mageia?

I need to get my fix of British talk shows, but in order to do that, I need to use a PPTP VPN.
How do I connect to a PPTP server on Mageia?

The lengths some people will go to to watch "Loose Women"

Depending on what sort of VPN you need there is a wizard in Mageia Control Centre but you have to install the drakwizard package first to get the extended set of MCC wizards.

If it is not a Cisco or OpenVPN VPN you need to connect to then this link may help
http://www.adminsehow.com/2010/04/connect-to-pptp-vpn-from-linux-only-by-one-command/
It is for PCLinuxOS so it should be much the same as Mageia.

djennings wrote:

I need to get my fix of British talk shows, but in order to do that, I need to use a PPTP VPN.
How do I connect to a PPTP server on Mageia?

The lengths some people will go to to watch "Loose Women"

Depending on what sort of VPN you need there is a wizard in Mageia Control Centre but you have to install the drakwizard package first to get the extended set of MCC wizards.

If it is not a Cisco or OpenVPN VPN you need to connect to then this link may help
http://www.adminsehow.com/2010/04/connect-to-pptp-vpn-from-linux-only-by-one-command/
It is for PCLinuxOS so it should be much the same as Mageia.

It's more like Jeremy Kyle, Top Gear, and Antiques Roadshow...yeah...moving on...
I actually tried this before I asked, and thus asked the question because it didn't actually work. It did work in PCLOS, which was the OS I just came from, but it doesn't work here.

What happened was this:
As super user (because you can't do it as the regular user for some reason) I entered the info for the VPN I like to use...

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pppd pty "pptp ukvpn.ufreevpn.com --nolaunchpppd" file /etc/ppp/options.pptp user ufreevpn.com password free

hit enter, then entered ifconfig. The result was...

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[root@localhost samuel]# ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 78:E3:B5:6F:96:29 
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr E0:06:E6:08:73:F9 
          inet addr:172.100.10.102  Bcast:172.100.10.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::e206:e6ff:fe08:73f9/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:200514 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:127149
          TX packets:112845 errors:7 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:256965396 (245.0 MiB)  TX bytes:10672792 (10.1 MiB)
          Interrupt:17

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback 
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:65536  Metric:1
          RX packets:52 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:52 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:2908 (2.8 KiB)  TX bytes:2908 (2.8 KiB)

ppp0      Link encap:Point-to-Point Protocol 
          inet addr:10.162.0.58  P-t-P:10.162.0.1  Mask:255.255.255.255
          UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST  MTU:1000  Metric:1
          RX packets:7 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:7 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:3
          RX bytes:94 (94.0 b)  TX bytes:112 (112.0 b)



So far so good...
I go onto Firefox and try to open a page.
At this point, the browser would redirect me to a page where I agree to the terms of usage of the VPN, then I continue with my browsing. Not so in Mageia.
What happens is the browser presents a page of which says...

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Unable to connect
     
     
     
     
     
       
       
          Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at www.itv.com.
       

       
       

  The site could be temporarily unavailable or too busy. Try again in a few
    moments.
  If you are unable to load any pages, check your computer's network
    connection.
  If your computer or network is protected by a firewall or proxy, make sure
    that Firefox is permitted to access the Web.

This warning occurs for all of the web pages I try to go on. It doesn't even try to redirect me to the terms of use page. I correct the problem by executing killall pppd, but then I can't access British programming because my IP address shows that I am in the United States.

I solved my own problem!
I was able to connect to the pptp vpn when I disabled my firewall.
Obviously, one needs to take caution when they do this, but this solution worked for me.

all forms of vpn need to use ports that may be blocked by the firwall.

if you use lsof -i you should be able to see what ports its using (or read its manual pages)

and add the firewall back so it works with the firewall.

otherwise you risk being spyed on , well not so much in your case but anyone else reading this, may be implementing vpn for privacy reasons

regards peter