Re: Strange VPN problems

[Rick Jones <rick activeservice co uk>]

--On Thursday, November 06, 2008 07:33:07 -0500 Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com> wrote:

¦ mobile broadband I assume?

Yes, my main use for VPN is over MB.

¦ > When the VPN is up, this entry has gone, replaced by something that
¦ > looks to me like a meaningless route:
¦ > 
¦ > 0.0.0.0         0.0.0.0         0.0.0.0         U     0      0        0 ppp1
¦ 
¦ No, this is a default route through the VPN, which is expected, since
¦ there aren't any custom routes either sent by the VPN server or added by
¦ you.  If there are no custom routes, everything will be sent through the
¦ VPN because you have not told NetworkManager what specific routes to use
¦ the VPN for.
¦ 
¦ > Standard pptp leaves the default route alone, as it should.
¦ 
¦ Maybe, maybe not :)  It depends on policy.

I take your point. In fact for my purpose I should really have a gateway route just to 192.168.7.* via the VPN server. Can this kind of routing policy be configured in NM?

However, there's still a strange problem with these routes. If the default route to the MB gateway on ppp0 is not present, then nothing will go over the VPN on ppp1, not even the echo packets. Successful echo depends _only_ on the existence of this route. Other communication over the VPN depends on both this _and_ an explicit route to the VPN server on ppp1.

I've tried all kinds of route permutations, and it won't work if the original MB default route is not there. It doesn't seem to make a lot of sense, but that's what's happening. Maybe you can figure it out?

-- 
Cheers
Rick