Topic: PPTP stops working 30 seconds after connecting

[judgej]

This is a strange one, and I am wondering whether anyone here has seen it before and can offer any view as to where the problem might be.

I have enabled PPTP on my SME Server (7.3, latest updates). I can connect remotely from my Windows XP laptop (something I always used to have problems with in the past, 7.1-series). The connection sets itself up fast, and everything appears fine, then 30 seconds in, the traffic over the connection simply stops. All pings, file browsing services, pringing services etc. just stop dead. The connection still claims to be up and running fine.

It is probably a problem with my laptop, but just thought I would throw it out to the community in case it is something anyone has seen before.

Since 30 seconds is not time enough to print the document I want to print, I now have to venture out to the office on a cold, wet, night to print it locally

-- Jason

[janet]

judgej

You should know by now, look in the log files, try the messages log file for starters, around the time you make & loose the VPN connection.

[CharlieBrady]

You should know by now ...

judgej should also know by now what he is told every time he creates a post here:

Don't report problems here - Please report bugs and potential bugs in the bug tracker

[byte]

This is a strange one, and I am wondering whether anyone here has seen it before and can offer any view as to where the problem might be.

See if your experiencing this issue:

http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4572

If not please open a new bug, giving as much details as possible. Thanks.

[judgej]

judgej should also know by now what he is told every time he creates a post here:

Don't report problems here - Please report bugs and potential bugs in the bug tracker

Is it a bug? I don't have a clue.

You should also know by now that when I am asking the community a question, then that is exactly what I am doing. I do not want to involve developers in something that I am asking the community about. Trying to find help here, and seeing page after page of similar problems with simply "raise a bug" as the response is *not* in the slightest bit helpful.

[judgej]

See if your experiencing this issue:

http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4572

Looks like there may be something fixed in 7.4 (bug raised in 2006). I'll wait and see.

The remote desktop/PPTP has not worked for me since e-smith 6.0.1. Every version there seems to be some different problem with either the server, the way the firewalls work, bugs in Windows etc. Maybe other people have more luck with it, but there does appear to be far too many things that can go wrong with it, perhaps because there are so many potential modules, network connections, firewalls, etc. in the path.

-- Jason

[soprom]

I'm having a similar problem with pptp. So let's document the situation so that someone can help...

[janet]

soprom & judgej

This already exists.
http://wiki.contribs.org/VPN_practical_tips

If you really want to resolve your perceived technical problems, then post a bug report.
That's the way you will sort out whether there is a bug or suspected bug or even the remote possibility of there being a bug, in the sme VPN PPTP implementation.

If the bug report leads to a non sme issue, then by all means bring it back to the forums for discussion, but do read the link provided above first.

[soprom]

Before I post a bug report, here is some info:

Connecting to sme7 from a Vista-home, the connection is made and after a short delay (1 minute or so) the traffic stops but Vista says the connection is up.

The sme7 says:

kernel: mppe_decompress[0]: osize too small! (have: 1404 need: 1405)

It is concerning mru and mtu... I saw a post about this in the bug reports which are a pain to search...

[cactus]

Before I post a bug report, here is some info:

Connecting to sme7 from a Vista-home, the connection is made and after a short delay (1 minute or so) the traffic stops but Vista says the connection is up.

The sme7 says:
It is concerning mru and mtu... I saw a post about this in the bug reports which are a pain to search...

How come you did not find this on your search for your error message: http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=549 ? It was quite easily found by searching on the error message in the cmments in the advanced search panel.

I suggest you have a look and see what e-smith-pptp version is installed:

Code: [Select]

rpm -q e-smith-pptpLatest should be: e-smith-pptpd-1.12.0-11.el4.sme

Not sure if it already is prepared for database value setting of mru/mtu, but did you also execute the suggestions from comment 28 (more details in comment 37)?

[soprom]

And http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=549#c42 saying ...

Latest package produces the following output:

nomppe-40
nomppe-stateful # refuse stateful mode, i.e. use stateless
# mru not set
ms-dns 192.168.2.1
ms-wins 192.168.2.1
# mtu not set

which takes us back to not setting anything but will allow those that want to play with the setting to set mtu/mru.

Nonetheless, the patch solved the problem in one case.

[cactus]

And http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=549#c42 saying ...

Nonetheless, the patch solved the problem in one case.

Agreed, but the version with this fix is not released (yet).

[soprom]

To conclude for the benefit of forum readers, the solution was available on the forum and on the bug tracker with keywords like mru and mtu (mainly here: http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=549#c37 and here http://forums.contribs.org/index.php?topic=40935.0):

Code: [Select]

mkdir -p /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/ppp/options.pptpd/
touch /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/ppp/options.pptpd/mtu
touch /etc/e-smith/templates-custom/etc/ppp/options.pptpd/mru
signal-event remoteaccess-update

It seems that a future release will address this kind of problem with config commands.