Comments on: Getting Poptop to run under FreeBSD 5 & 6

By: jim

jim — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 21:57:32 +0000

Sorry to say that I don’t run poptop anymore. I’ve replaced all my VPN terminating routers with pfSense boxes (http://www.pfsense.org/). :-)

They use MPD for PPTP, but I’ve also phased out almost all my PPTP VPNs, in favor of IPsec mobile clients with the Shrew Soft client, or OpenVPN.

I wish I could help, those do look like the errors I saw before, but I don’t recall any specifics except that when I was running with the config I posted here they went away…

By: Stumped

Stumped — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 21:48:50 +0000

I realize this is a very very old post, but I’ve been using it as a reference to get poptop working on freeBSD 6.3. I’ve used about 5 or 6 different website recommended configurations and can’t get it to work.

Just in case you still monitor this at all, here is the error I’m getting. Similar to your above, but slightly different and I can’t fix it:
Warning: Label /etc/ppp/ppp.conf rejected -direct connection: Configuration label not found
GRE: read(fd=7,buffer=804d580, len=8196) from PTY failed: status = 0 error = No Error
CTRL: PTY read or GRE write failed (pty,gre)=(7,6)

My usr/local/etc/pptpd.conf file looks like this:
option /etc/ppp/ppp.conf
localip
remoteip
pidfile /var/run/pptpd.pid
nobsdcomp
proxyarp
+chapms-v2
mppe-40
mppe-128
mppe-stateless
noipparam
debug

My etc/ppp/ppp.conf:
pptp:
set timeout 0
set log phase chat connect lcp ipcp tun
set dial
set login
enable passwdauth
enable mssfixup
set ifaddr
allow mode direct
set server /tmp/loop “” 0177
enable chap
enable mschapv2
disable pap
enable proxy
accept dns
set dns
set nbns
set device !/etc/ppp/secure

From client side, I’m running Windows XP and trying to do a standard VPN connection, getting 619 error after it tries to authenticate credentials.

Notes: I’m not using a /etc/ppp/secure file just like your setup recommends (getting same errors with or without it). I’ve played around with the firewall, and it’s definitely allowing connections on port 1723. I’ve put in code to allow GRE, but I have no way to test it (assuming it’s working because I was getting a GRE socket() error before I added it in).

Any help is appreciated more than you could possibly believe. Thank you.

By: jim

jim — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 11:22:21 +0000

If you have a link to a tutorial or information on MPD, I’d happily link to it. Poptop works well and really wasn’t that hard to configure, and works on multiple platforms.

That’s the great thing about UNIX, there is usually more than one good way to get the job done, and the choice is left up to the admin or user. :)

By: Ryan

Ryan — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 09:50:34 +0000

no offense … what used poptop for if in freebsd we’ve much robust one that’s MPD… trust me MPD could easily configured and could do l2tp, pptp , and many more

By: yudy

yudy — Thu, 23 Aug 2007 12:10:11 +0000

tail -f /var/log/messages
Aug 23 19:08:35 kunam pptpd[34764]: CTRL: PTY read or GRE write failed (pty,gre)=(7,6)
Aug 23 19:08:35 kunam ppp[34765]: Warning: 192.168.212.140: Cannot determine ethernet address for proxy ARP
Aug 23 19:09:24 kunam ppp[34914]: Warning: Add route failed: 0.0.0.0/0 already exists
Aug 23 19:09:40 kunam pptpd[34913]: GRE: read(fd=7,buffer=804d580,len=8196) from PTY failed: status = 0 error = No error
Aug 23 19:09:40 kunam pptpd[34913]: CTRL: PTY read or GRE write failed (pty,gre)=(7,6)
Aug 23 19:09:40 kunam ppp[34914]: Warning: 192.168.212.141: Cannot determine ethernet address for proxy ARP
Aug 23 19:16:27 kunam ppp[35182]: Warning: Add route failed: 0.0.0.0/0 already exists
Aug 23 19:16:43 kunam pptpd[35181]: GRE: read(fd=7,buffer=804d580,len=8196) from PTY failed: status = 0 error = No error
Aug 23 19:16:43 kunam pptpd[35181]: CTRL: PTY read or GRE write failed (pty,gre)=(7,6)
Aug 23 19:16:43 kunam ppp[35182]: Warning: 192.168.212.142: Cannot determine ethernet address for proxy ARP

please help me…
what do you do ?

thank’s

By: xer

xer — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 12:53:38 +0000

I forgot to say…
My FreeBSD (legacy 5.5) doesn’t have the file called:
/etc/ppp/secure

So, i did it as follow:

#|/bin/sh
exec /usr/sbin/ppp -direct loop-in

It works, but i don’t know if is the right way, i found it on google search.
Another one, in /etc/ppp/ppp.secret you can ASSIGN the given IP as follow:
username password “192.168.0.215″

To that username will be assigned THAT ip, it works, so you don’t have to make a RANGE, can be useful?

By: xer

xer — Fri, 27 Apr 2007 08:43:53 +0000

Hello.
It works, and i did before another kind of on a linux debian, but i think that FreeBSD its better.
i have only this strange message on screen (/var/log/messages):

Apr 26 23:09:15 fw pptpd[99783]: CTRL: Ignored a SET LINK INFO packet with real ACCMs!

I really don’t understand what it is mean!

By: proctozont

proctozont — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 08:16:41 +0000

Realy helped, thank you.

By: jim

jim — Fri, 09 Feb 2007 14:23:29 +0000

I haven’t tested this one myself, because I don’t run windows shares across PPTP, but the usual suggestions for network browsing may apply:

Are you using a WINS server? If so, is that being set or passed to the PPTP client?

Can you still access the shares by using \\1.2.3.4\ (with a proper IP address, of course)?

Is broadcast traffic being passed back and forth?

There are many differences between 5.3 and 6.x, but I am not sure what may have caused this to pop up.

By: Jorge

Jorge — Tue, 06 Feb 2007 20:50:45 +0000

…strange…an xp systeam does connect and can ping every computer on the network but can’t see netbios names and shares. There have been no changes to the firewall and it used to work using freebsd 5.3