Ben's Ramblings

Its been awhile since i’ve setup a PPTP server in linux but the overhead of server 2003 for under 10 users is hard to justify the cost. I’ve compiled a short how-to for reference. This is based off Ubuntu 8.10 but would most likely work for any flavor of both Ubuntu or Debian.

Install software…

aptitude install pptpd

Get your ip address

ifconfig – get eth0 ip address

First Config File

sudo nano -w /etc/pptpd.conf

what is -w? it turns off automatic line wrapping

Edit the following information:

localip      192.168.0.5 (this address should be the IP address of your server [inet addr] when you type ifconfig, see above )

remoteip   192.168.0.241-246 (this will provide you with 6 working IPs (aka a /29))

Get your DNS Servers

cat /etc/resolve.conf  ( your looking for the numbers after the word nameserver )

Second Config File

sudo nano -w /etc/ppp/options

Edit the following information:

ms-dns  18.70.0.160 (replace information from /etc/resolve, copy only the IP)

ms-dns  18.71.0.151

Third Config File

sudo nano -w /etc/sysctrl.conf

fine the line that says:

#net.ipv4.conf.default.forwarding=1

remove the #

This will allow the kernel to foward packets to your VPN clients

Final Config File

sudo nano -w /etc/ppp/chap-secrets

Format:

username service password ip

(* will allow any IP address to conncet)

alice pptpd secret-password-here  *

bob pptpd secret-password-here *

Lastly, reboot.

When your machine comes back up, you may need to /etc/init.d/pptpd start

Jungledisk is a front end to Amazon S3 storage service that provides the ability to share files between computers AND backup your data on the cheap (0.15 cents per GB)… What I like about this best is it has software for all 3 operating systems (Windows, OSX, Linux) and surprisingly works quiet well on Ubuntu but its not as integrated as I’d like. Mainly, I can’t mount and unmount the Jungledisk without considerable headache. So a simple how to on how to get it working (Hardy 8.04)

Step one, edit /etc/fstab

sudo nano /etc/fstab
add line:
http://localhost:2667 /home/yournamehere/jungledisk davfs nolocks,user,noaskauth 0 0

step two:davfs2

sudo aptitude install davfs2

step three: fix the davfs2 install

sudo chmod ug+s /sbin/mount.davfs

step four: fix the davfs2 config so that admin (instead of staff) can use it.

sudo nano /etc/davfs2/davfs2.conf
###
# General Options
# ---------------

# dav_user        davfs2            # system wide config file only
dav_user nobody
# dav_group       davfs2            # system wide config file only
dav_group admin

davfs2, jungledisk, ubuntu

After a quick heatsink fix on the server, things seem to be running smoothly. After a little tinkering, setup mrtg (multi router traffic graph) which works for things other than routers:

 

 

Even one for mail: 

And one for spam

 

I’ve been working on some anti-drone stuff for Rizon (the chat network i’m staff at) and going to try and get some graphs from the data next.