NetworkManager PPTP Support

[Antony J Mee <A J Mee ncl ac uk>]

Evening all,

I have finally checked in my current work-in-progress code for the PPTP 
plugin under vpn-daemons/pptp into CVS.

This rewrite solves the issues regarding the alteration of config files 
in /etc,
the passing of IP config info from pppd and name resolution of the VPN 
server
as discussed with Robert and Dan sometime ago on this list.

Current status is:
  1) It works
BUT
  2) It occasionally seg faults (when bringing down the connection and 
can take NM with it).  Big bug!
  3) The code for passing the authentication info to the pppd plugin 
via DBUS is missing
      so currently one has place ones password in the apporpriate place 
at compile time.
      (this was a quick fix to minimise complications while trying to 
squash the segfault bug)
      See nm-pptp-service-pppd-plugin.c line 86!

Basically, it is not ready for public consumption yet but I've been 
really busy and I know Tim and others would like to
take a stab at it in the meantime.

Some may be interested to know that this is 98.36% a general plugin for 
managing a pppd connection from NetworkManager
it can for example be modified to handle something like an ADSL 
connection in a mater of minutes!  (I tried this with eciadsl and a BT 
Voyager USB ADSL modem!)  The only difficulty is that such tunnels are 
not really "VPN" connections and NM does not presently have an 
appropriate place for them.  Dan (without getting distracted from WPA 
:-) ), Robert... Any thoughts on that?  Is work wired/wireless network + 
home USB ADSL a use case too far?

(People wanting to use it in anger immediately are for the moment better 
off with the old version that used ip-up scripts etc.
That version is still available as a tarball from my blog 
http://www.students.ncl.ac.uk/a.j.mee/ )

tOnY