Topic: [SOLVED] VPN connections stopped working.

[Elliott]

Hi.

I am running SME 7.0 and VPN connections were working without a problem from various XP boxes. In the last few days I've installed a few extras and suddenly the VPN connections are failing.

It doesn't make sense to me mainly becasue the additions were mostly email or virus specific. For example, I added the cron.daily for sa-update to keep the spamassasin database updated. I also added the mailstats.cron to update the spamassasin filter stats. The only other thing that I see in my history that I've doen that's a system change is removed the SARG package.

The error that I get happens after the MS machine authenticates and is trying to "log in to the network". It says Error 734: The PPP link control protocol was terminated. Here's an image with more info:


The only other thing I can think of that might be pertinent is that somewhere in the process prior to me removing the SARG package, I had installed Sme7admin and between it and SARG my root and admin password seemed to get fuddled so I had to do a password reset.

Can anyone shed any light on why or how this might have effected VPN logins. Nothing on the clients or my network structure has changed so I'm certain that the problem lies within the realm of the SME box.

I really don't want to setup a new box and migrate the users and email over to it to get VPN running again if I can help it.

Thanks.

[Elliott]

Bump.


Really... no ideas or suggestions? Or Perhaps the holiday ham is still settling.

[byte]

Moving this topic to the SME Server 7.x forum, it is more appropriate there. Thanks!

[byte]

First thing to check is the logs directory, then if you still can't find the problem then please open a bug ticket so this can be resolved as it may be a potential bug

[Elliott]

Are you referring to /var/log?

I have looked at the /var/log/pptpd directory and found no useful files.

Thanks.

[Amir Inbar]

Happened here also.

[william_syd]

What does the output of the following give..

Code: [Select]

uname -r

Code: [Select]

rpm -qa | grep kernel

Code: [Select]

rpm -qa | grep kmod

[Elliott]

Code: [Select]

uname -r
RETURNS

Code: [Select]

2.6.9-34.0.2.EL

Code: [Select]

rpm -qa | grep kernel
RETURNS

Code: [Select]

kernel-smp-2.6.9-34.EL
kernel-smp-2.6.9-42.0.2.EL
kernel-module-ppp-1.0.2-2_2.6.9_42.0.2.EL
kernel-smp-module-ppp-1.0.2-2_2.6.9_42.0.2.EL
kernel-2.6.9-34.EL
kernel-utils-2.4-13.1.80
kernel-2.6.9-42.0.2.EL
kernel-module-appletalk-1.0-1_2.6.9_42.0.2.EL
kernel-smp-module-appletalk-1.0-1_2.6.9_42.0.2.EL
kernel-smp-module-slip-1.0-1_2.6.9_42.0.2.EL
kernel-smp-2.6.9-34.0.2.EL
kernel-2.6.9-34.0.2.EL
kernel-module-slip-1.0-1_2.6.9_42.0.2.EL

Code: [Select]

rpm -qa | grep kmod
RETURNS
nothing

[Elliott]

And on that note (not related to the stoppage of VPN connections...) I thought I'd be running an SMP kernel since I'm running on a hyperthreaded Xeon.

[byte]

Code: [Select]

uname -r
RETURNS

Code: [Select]

2.6.9-34.0.2.EL

Code: [Select]

rpm -qa | grep kernel
RETURNS

Code: [Select]

kernel-smp-2.6.9-34.EL
kernel-smp-2.6.9-42.0.2.EL
kernel-module-ppp-1.0.2-2_2.6.9_42.0.2.EL
kernel-smp-module-ppp-1.0.2-2_2.6.9_42.0.2.EL
kernel-2.6.9-34.EL
kernel-utils-2.4-13.1.80
kernel-2.6.9-42.0.2.EL
kernel-module-appletalk-1.0-1_2.6.9_42.0.2.EL
kernel-smp-module-appletalk-1.0-1_2.6.9_42.0.2.EL
kernel-smp-module-slip-1.0-1_2.6.9_42.0.2.EL
kernel-smp-2.6.9-34.0.2.EL
kernel-2.6.9-34.0.2.EL
kernel-module-slip-1.0-1_2.6.9_42.0.2.EL

From that it appears you are running the wrong kernel as you must have updated via yum and the latest you have is ...42.0.2 so you need to reboot and select the latest kernel. Watch out for the .EL and ELsmp looks like you need the .EL version

[byte]

And on that note (not related to the stoppage of VPN connections...) I thought I'd be running an SMP kernel since I'm running on a hyperthreaded Xeon.

OK then you need to select the SMP kernel.

[Elliott]

I don't see any menu when I boot. I'm assuming this is something I should already know how to do but on my other *nix machines I usually see a quick menu that comes up on boot time. In fact I seem to remember that being the case with SME.

Perhaps this changed with the move to CentOs?

[byte]

if you reboot and you will see a white background press the up and down arrow key (maybe the "esc" key) and you should then see the list of kernels

[brianr]

Don't you need to hit "return" at boot time to get the menu of kernels - you do on my test 7.1 system that I've just tried!

Just realised - the "any" key will probably work.

[Elliott]

So I finally got the menu up and rebooted and it looks like the VPN connections are being accepted again. How does using the SMP kernel or the standard one have anything to do with VPN or PPTP connections... and what would have caused my system to start booting into the standard kernel in the first place?

Thanks for the help!