PPTPd installation and configuration

Setting up a PPTP server (aka VPN in Microsoft Windows operating systems) on Slackware 13.1 with the aid of SlackBuilds.org (SBo) and sbopkg. Most of this is lifted from here, which was the most recent set of instructions I could find. Everything else dated from a few years ago, and that makes those documents about as useful as a chocolate teapot.

Install pptpd from SBo. Use sbopkg if you like, otherwise follow the instructions here.

Once that’s complete, edit /etc/ppp/chap-secrets with your favourite editor. I like vim, so:

vim /etc/ppp/chap-secrets

Add a new username and password to log in:

someusername pptpd somestrongpassword *

Replace someusername and somestrongpassword with the username and password you wish to use to connect to your VPN.

Now we need to tell pptpd how to handle the new connections’ IP addresses on the local network. Edit /etc/pptpd.conf with your favourite editor:

vim /etc/pptpd.conf

In /etc/pptpd.conf, add the following lines to give the remote machine an IP on the local network in the 192.168.111.0/24 subnet:

localip 192.168.111.1
remoteip 192.168.111.234-238,192.168.111.245

Moving on, edit /etc/ppp/options.pptpd

vim /etc/ppp/options.pptpd

In that file, replace ms-dns 192.168.1.1 and ms-dns 192.168.1.2
with Google’s DNS servers:

ms-dns 8.8.8.8 
ms-dns 8.8.4.4

The final step is opening up port 1723 on your router and setting up dynamic dns to provide a more easily remembered address to connect to from your remote host.

When all that’s done, launch pptpd as root and try connecting to your new PPTP/VPN server.