Re: Pointers for configuring vpn please

[Colin Helliwell <colin helliwell ln-systems com>]

> On 10 May 2017 at 15:12 Thomas Haller <thaller redhat com> wrote:
>
> On Wed, 2017-05-10 at 14:57 +0100, colin helliwell ln-systems com
> wrote:
>
> > I'd like to get NM VPN connections going on my platform.
> > We have a VPN for dial-in from home, so I'll just test out with that
> > to
> > begin with. We use a Draytek vpn client on Windows, which is
> > configured for
> > PPTP with the necessary username and password.
> > I've built/installed the NetworkManager-pptp plugin, but could I get
> > some
> > tips please on how to manually (editing/nmcli - no gui) configure a
> > vpn
> > connection? (The errors from what I've tried so far aren't too
> > informative
> >
> > *   reason="Could not find source connection.")
> > Not too concerned about the securest/cleanest way to configure the
> > connection settings - just want to verify that I've got all the
> > necessary
> > components installed.
>
> Hi,
>
> There is no documentation. Look at the source:
>
> https://git.gnome.org/browse/network-manager-pptp/tree/src/nm-pptp-service.c?id=6e4a25d5abbc06010f4ce3a69edad6e121582357#n112
>
> It seems easiest to use nm-connection-editor (with the GUI plugin of
> NetworkManager-pptp) on another host, and look at the created
> connection in /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections
>
> You can copy the keyfile over to your headless system (beware that the
> file must be owned by root, and chmod 600; followed by nmcli connection reload).
>
> Alternatively, once you *know* which properties you want to set, you
> can set them via
>  nmcli connection modify "$NAME" +vpn.data 'property1=value1'
>
> best,
> Thomas

Thanks Thomas.
I've got a little further just now: 
First my Eth0 wasn't managed [still trying to figure out how to use the ifupdown 'managed' setting, so at the 
mo' I just need to remember to remove it from /etc/network/interfaces]
Then I've added "password-flags=0" and a 'vpn-secrets' section for the password.
Log messages now are:
May 10 15:12:16 wg daemon.info NetworkManager[972]: <info>  [1494425536.6092] audit: op="connection-activate" 
uuid="5a2d1600-531c-42de-ac21-d8a5e1f0f8c5" name="vpn-pptp" pid=1014 uid=0 result="success"
May 10 15:12:16 wg daemon.info NetworkManager[972]: <info>  [1494425536.6422] 
vpn-connection[0x1098218,5a2d1600-531c-42de-ac21-d8a5e1f0f8c5,"vpn-pptp",0]: Started the VPN service, PID 1020
May 10 15:12:16 wg daemon.info NetworkManager[972]: <info>  [1494425536.7229] 
vpn-connection[0x1098218,5a2d1600-531c-42de-ac21-d8a5e1f0f8c5,"vpn-pptp",0]: Saw the service appear; 
activating connection
May 10 15:12:16 wg daemon.info NetworkManager[972]: <info>  [1494425536.9368] 
vpn-connection[0x1098218,5a2d1600-531c-42de-ac21-d8a5e1f0f8c5,"vpn-pptp",0]: VPN connection: 
(ConnectInteractive) reply received
May 10 15:12:16 wg daemon.warn NetworkManager[972]: <warn>  [1494425536.9610] 
vpn-connection[0x1098218,5a2d1600-531c-42de-ac21-d8a5e1f0f8c5,"vpn-pptp",0]: VPN connection: failed to 
connect: 'Could not find pptp client binary.'
May 10 15:12:17 wg daemon.info NetworkManager[972]: <info>  [1494425537.0177] 
vpn-connection[0x1098218,5a2d1600-531c-42de-ac21-d8a5e1f0f8c5,"vpn-pptp",0]: VPN plugin: state changed: 
stopped (6)
May 10 15:12:17 wg daemon.info NetworkManager[972]: <info>  [1494425537.0292] 
vpn-connection[0x1098218,5a2d1600-531c-42de-ac21-d8a5e1f0f8c5,"vpn-pptp",0]: VPN service disappeared

So an additional package (the "pptp client binary") needed...?