Title says it all. I actually use Linux in a business environment. Source of admiration and derision by my colleagues....

Anyway, I definitely need a decent interface to set up PPTP connections. I work from home, and the company I work for has offices worldwide. To connect to their infractructure, many have their own VPN solution based on PPTP. I know, not the best VPN solution, but this is the real world, people go with the stuff they know.

So far I have been using pptpconfig, which is still better at handling multiple PPTP connections at the same time than Kvpnc.

However, it is becoming obsolete. I would like to request a decent PPTP GUI that:
- allows configuration of PPTP connections
- allows multiple PPTP connections at the same time
- sets / unsets additional routes
- sets / unsets specific DNS servers and search rules
- has an auto reconnect feature when a connection drops

Something like Kvpnc, but easier to use, less quirky in behaviour and allowing multiple connections.

All those in favour say 'Aye'.

XiniX wrote:So far I have been using pptpconfig, which is still better at handling multiple PPTP connections at the same time than Kvpnc.

I think there is a PPTP VPN plugin for NetworkManager, however I am not sure how good the respective UI is.

NetworkManager as of version 0.7 should be able to have more than one active connection, so this point should be covered as well.

Cheers,
_

Mmmm, Networkmanager.... last time I used it it was very buggy. I switched to Wicd which is utter bliss. But hey, if it works OK now I might check it out....

It works fine for me for wired and wireless connections, but I have to admit I haven't used it for VPN yet.

Just wanted to point you to another option and there seems to be quite some work going into improvements there (e.g. dial-in support, mainly for 3G/UMTS devices)

Cheers,
_

For the love of god yes!!!

I have 20 customers that need remote support over ptpp. I've been using the gnome network manager but on a trial run of jaunty the gnome applet doesn't seem to work. I would really love to upgrade to kde4.2 but If I don't have a easy way of configuring and using ptpp vpn's I would be committing professional suicide.

Yes, current VPN/PPTP does not work for me with network manager plasmoid in KDE 4.2.2 in Kubuntu 9.04. So I uninstalled it and installed network-manager-gnome and gnome-keyring and gnome-keyring-daemon to get nm-applet. Then in /etc/xdg/autostart/nm-applet.desktop file there is a line like "OnlyStartIn=GNOME;XFCE;" and I added "KDE;" to the list.

Now gnome's network manager with its working vpn/pptp plugins works fine for me on Kubunu !

Hopefully this should all work in KDE for next 4.3 release before the end of the year

For the record, I find that kvpnc does the job at the moment. It is unfriendly t o configure, does not reset resolv.conf when disconnected and needs to be run as root, but other than that, it works. Oh, and I still need to use the KDE3 version, since the KDE4 version was buggy (last time I tried was 2 months ago or so).

An integrated solution in Networkmanager sounds good. But from what I read, the Networkmanager in Kubuntu still hs quite some rough edges, so I am not holding my breath.

Strange really that KDE has never had a decent, working networkmanager so far. I believe it is one of the key utilities, so why oh why does KDE not succeed in getting it right?

vishalrao wrote:Yes, current VPN/PPTP does not work for me with network manager plasmoid in KDE 4.2.2 in Kubuntu 9.04. So I uninstalled it and installed network-manager-gnome and gnome-keyring and gnome-keyring-daemon to get nm-applet. Then in /etc/xdg/autostart/nm-applet.desktop file there is a line like "OnlyStartIn=GNOME;XFCE;" and I added "KDE;" to the list.

Aaaaaarrrrgggghhhh

Thanks, Vishal. I am currently on my experimental ancient Inspiron 6k at a coffee house. I try different things with it until i b0rk it completely; by then a new release is usually avail and i reinstall from scratch. Today was reinstall day .

9.04 looked very promising at first, ran fast and well on the first try on this ancient onboard-gfx laptop. NetworkManager gaves signs of working as well; got on my wired at home, got on the wireless here, no issues. But please, please, someone follow my progress here and take the lesson to heart:

1) Wireless is working, time to test my VPN connection to work which uses MS' RRAS - aka, The Microsoft VPN.
2) Hmm, VPN is there but it doesn't support pptp. Ok, there must be a way around this. One quick google search later yields the magic name network-manager-pptp - and package manager finds it right away and installs it.
3) Still only have OpenVPN and VPNC as options. Logout, restart X, login. Fail. Still only have OpenVPN and VPNC.
4) Reboot laptop. Fail. Still only have Open and C as options, as above. Ponder. Read various documentation. All seems to indicate I have done all that is needed.

At this point, you have lost most users. Honestly, as stated in this thread and elsewhere on bugreps and wishlists, the most common OS' VPN not being supported out of the box despite apparent VPN support probably loses even more, as people new to linux aren't going to realize "i bet there's a package for this available for free."

If you want to spread KDE adoption, you must fix this.

Meanwhile, i have installed the pptp plugin and it doesn't work. I am now poking around config files. We're off the map as far as the standard business user is concerned. Honeslty, given Vish's post, i suspect it ain't gonna work at all.

I don't understand how this went out the door broken, unless it something specific to the hardware Vishal and i are using that caused it, which seems low probability. In my case, it was an hour-old clean install, single boot, full disk, nothing else installed yet. Ah well.

There are existing bug reports for the KDE network manager plasmoid for VPN/PPTP not working even if you install the pptp package I should have mentioned I also had tried installing network-manager-pptp and the KDE plasmoid did not show VPN/PPTP options...

It looks like Fedora 11 have the right idea, when I tried their KDE beta I noticed the GNOME network manager icon by default which gave me the idea
to try this in Kubuntu too...

I dont think the network manager will be ready for KDE 4.3 either... so we can hope 4.4 is on time and includes more fixes by the time 9.10 karmic koala is out!

In the mean time I am happy running Kubuntu 9.04 with GNOME's network manager...

Damn, that's disappointing. When the wired and wireless worked immediately, my first thought was "they got it working finally! and it looks *so cool!*"

NetworkManager has been an albatross around KDE's development's neck for a long time now. The rest of it is improving steadily. My advice would be, seriously, just remove it. Make it go away. It's only causing harm. I can't believe no one there thought pptp would work OK, but they perpetratin' like it does anyway, with the plugin up in repository and no warnings on it, like "btw broken don't use this yet...."

Guess i'll have to rip out poor old nm and just use the gnome's.

If they do get it working, i hope they keep the plasmoid. Nice look to it. If i had the faintest clue how i'd try tying it to the gnome nm for now XD

They're working on it and need testers to help:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/kubun ... 02804.html

PPA and mailing list discussion is on![hr]
They're working on it and need testers to help:

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/kubun ... 02804.html

PPA and mailing list discussion is on!

vishalrao wrote:Yes, current VPN/PPTP does not work for me with network manager plasmoid in KDE 4.2.2 in Kubuntu 9.04. So I uninstalled it and installed network-manager-gnome and gnome-keyring and gnome-keyring-daemon to get nm-applet. Then in /etc/xdg/autostart/nm-applet.desktop file there is a line like "OnlyStartIn=GNOME;XFCE;" and I added "KDE;" to the list.

Now gnome's network manager with its working vpn/pptp plugins works fine for me on Kubunu !

Hopefully this should all work in KDE for next 4.3 release before the end of the year

Hi!
I did as you suggested, then logged back in, the gnome applet appeared in my system tray and it worked perfectly allowing me to connect via vpn.
The problem is that after restarting the computer the gnome applet would no longer be launched.
Any suggestions? the filed that i modified following your guidelines were still left as I wrote them.
Should I counter check any other configuration file?

hmmm im at a loss... the only thing i can think of is that nm-applet is silently failing...

after you login can you run "nm-applet" in a console and see what is the output? i think you can run with debug option "nm-applet -d" i think something like that... and it will log if there are any errors giving a hint...

i notice that i am using kubuntu and you might be using opensuse, i hope it is not a distro specific problem...

vishalrao wrote:hmmm im at a loss... the only thing i can think of is that nm-applet is silently failing...

after you login can you run "nm-applet" in a console and see what is the output? i think you can run with debug option "nm-applet -d" i think something like that... and it will log if there are any errors giving a hint...

i notice that i am using kubuntu and you might be using opensuse, i hope it is not a distro specific problem...

after giving the command i get the following
** (nm-applet:3687): WARNING **: applet_dbus_manager_start_service(): Could not acquire the NetworkManagerUserSettings service as it is already taken. Return: 3

however if I rerun the suse control panel for network devices, then it involves a "restarting network services" command which launches the gnome applet...

You will need to open System Settings > Advanced > KDE Services. Find the "Network Management" service and stop it. You will also need to remove the "Network Management" plasmoid from your desktop.