Topic: SME replacement?

[jules]

as to the original question, ClarkConnect is a pretty similar distro (headless gateway/email/web/ftp/file server). based more closely on redhat, it leans towards simple 'apt-get' for functional enhancements/modularity. I think they've also got a better view on what's gpl & what's-extra-but-not-too-expen$ive. it has had some lingering PPPoE issues for some issues (then again, so has SME)

[guestHH]

ok guys,

let's get things straight:

1. Mitel SME server is 1 of the best out of the box disto's out there
2. Mitel does a great deal about support for commercial as wel as non commercial users
3. Every update has his advantages _and_ disadvantages
4. Every use(userbase) c.q. setup c.q. expectation/environment is different
5. Not all of us are experts
6. There are _many_ dependencies, parties en products to cope with

That being said, I feel that there _are_ issues with 5.6U4. I really want to help, but as Mitel told me, things ain't goin'to be fix by the comment 'it doesn't work'.

Please provide all available info as much as you can about _your_ problems. Maybe we should start a 'debug 5.6U4 project' on contribs.org before we kill these boards.

So, questions:
A: Are you willing to help?
B: Are you willing provide details about your problems
C: Are you willing to test to the best of your abilities
D: Are you willing to share all info

then, start a 'project' on contribs.org and we all can post the findings on these boards.

Please don't flame me, i'm just trying to figure out the best way to serve us all.

go here: http://wiki.contribs.org/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=50#50
to start working on it.

Thanks for you efforts.
Regards,
guestHH

[Who Knew]

SME :

S neaky
M icrosoft
E verywhere?

[Dub Dublin]

RequestedDeletion is  absolutely right - we need to work together to try and figure out what is so badly broken (at least for most of us) with PPTP in 5.6.

Here's my story:

2 SME 5.5 servers, with minor modifications (user panel, devinfo update panel, etc.)

Both upgraded to 5.6, then U4 immediately applied. (I have NOT applied the PPOE patch in the subdirectory  under the RPMs directory in U4 - is that required for PPTP to work?  I don't think so, and the U4 upgrade instructions don't make it seem necessary, since they make no mention of that directory at all.)

The 5.6 upgrade process blew away all the non-standard panels in server-manager on one machine (the one that had trouble with the upgrade due to the bug that you can't upgrade with only 64 MB of RAM - search for my previous post on this), but they persisted on the other one.  Weird.

Anyway, after the 5.6 upgrade and applying U4, PPTP refuses to work at all, under any circumstances, on both machines, giving only the "unhelpful" (as Donald Rumsfeld would say) message from a Windows client PC, "Error: 645 Dial-Up Networking could not complete the connection to the server. Check your configuration and try the connection again."

I have also scoured logs and such looking for a clue, but the fact is that PPTP worked fine under 5.5, and does not work at all (at least for me) under 5.6.

I'll post more info if and when I learn more.  Right now, there's not much to go on.  I'll try running some process I/O traces as soon as I have time to unravel what programs get called to build the PPTP connection (and look up the Linux equivalent of trace/truss again - I never remember what it is..)  If someone already knows the programs involved here, post the info please, and we'll have a starting point, anyway.  Happy hunting.

[hanscees]

I do not want to be rude, but I think that if you add all kinds of non-supported things you cannot assume that an upgrade will work. Updates should, but upgrades not.

Nobody expects that programs still run going from windows nt to 2000 to xp. Similar esmith went to kernel 2.4 and thus if you are carefull you do an install from scratch and then move your data.

Having done that, if something does not work try to pin down what is not working and provide detailed logging and so on so it can be fixed. The place to do that is the bug-email address.

Having said that I would not recommend pptp at all, but ipsec and ssh from a security standpoint.

Last but not least I do agree that 5.6 is a more difficult beast because of its 2.4 kernel jump. If I was running production I would wait a while for a next version.

Just my 2 cents.

[hanscees]

>me and can't connect to the 5.6 pptp box at work. I can't reboot it during business >hours either..so I am stuck. SSH works fine, but I need to be on the lan.

You can use ssh to go anywhere on your lan. If you can get to the esmith box with ssh you can tunnel to your lan easily.

Use putty on your home windows machine or plain ssh if you have linux. Let your ssh forward you to the machine you need. You can set up multiple tunnels too.

If you then connect to the local port you defined you can do anything on your lan, from vncview to telnet to ftp to even netbios(wouldnt do that as the first tryout though). See ssh howtos on the web.

hc

[Michael Soulier]

guestHH wrote:
>
> Something is defenitely 'not 100% OK' with version 5.6 U4.
> But I can't figure out why, but am very willing to help out...

It would help to know more than, 'It's not working'. I recently tested pptp and found no problems, but I didn't leave the connection up for long. I could leave one overnight and see if it's still there in the morning, but it would really help if you provided detailed information.

Mike

[Alejandro Lengua]

PPTP is working for me fine on 5.6 U4, however the performance is poor.

I don't what to do to improve it.

Better cpu? lower encryption? disable encryption?

[Michael Soulier]

Alejandro Lengua wrote:
>
> PPTP is working for me fine on 5.6 U4, however the
> performance is poor.

That could be many, many different things.

> Better cpu? lower encryption? disable encryption?

Lower encryption won't work, since we require 128-bit. If you can't do 128-bit, you shouldn't be able to connect.

Disable encryption again won't work, but why is it that you'd like to take the 'P' out of VPN?

Finding bottlenecks can be hard. Look at bandwidth, cpu on both boxes, etc.

Mike