Absolute beginner's guide to PPTP VPN !

[Admin]

I think it has nothing to do with nginx unless you put it to listen to some port needed for pptp.
High CPU might be related to encryption errors, try to allow even non-encrypted connections and see if that works.
iptables -L to see if the rules are there for sure.

[Carbon6]

I guess it may be related to this?

syslog
pppd[1048]: Plugin /usr/lib/pptpd/pptpd-logwtmp.so loaded.
pppd[1048]: Couldn't open the /dev/ppp device: No such file or directory
pptpd[1047]: CTRL: Reaping child PPP[1048]

Edit:
For anyone with this issue, you need to create the device by
#mknod /dev/ppp c 108 0

and possibly
#modprobe ppp-generic

Then you are good to go

[Admin]

Thank you for the reply

That is supposed to be done by the script. Maybe there was some error at installation.

Thanks again

Admin

[gunemalli]

This was an excellent writeup. Just installed Ubuntu 12.10 32 bit and followed the instructions and worked like a charm straight out of the bat.

Now I've got a few questions.

1. How can I secure this server as it stands now, there's nothing on the server apart form the pptp service.
2. I would like to use this server to connect a few PCs on different locations and have access to shared resources on those PCs. What more changes do I have to do?

Thanks in advance.

[Admin]

Hello !

you should do netstat -l and see what listens to the internet. Probably you have ssh on port 22 and the pptp server (1723). If you have something else listening, you should turn it off. The alternative would be to put up a firewall to block all the other ports, but you may have problems with the GRE protocol 47 needed for pptp and, also, why add a block to something you dont need instead of uninstalling it...
To uninstall apache (port 80) on debian and related apt-get remove apache2, for bind (port 53) apt-get remove bind9, for smtp (port 25) apt-get remove exim4 sendm*.
Alternatively, you can install the minimal version of the template and start again with the pptp server install. That has only ssh listening on port 22. See some security tips on how to move ssh port to hide it, or use only keys, allow access only form certain IPs, etc.
I do no recommend a firewall in any case, better to remove the unneeded applications than shield them from internet with a firewall.

[dedicados]

Hello! is there a way to use also the ipv6 of the vpn server to browse?

instead only the ipv4, use both.

on the vps im testing i have ipv4 and ipv6.

[Admin]

It depends, you need to have IPv6 on your connection.

[dedicados]

on my home conection? or on the VPS

i have only ipv4 at home, would like to connect to my VPS and have ipv4 & ipv6

[Admin]

If you do not have IPv6 at home your options are limited. There can be some ugly hacks, but that is very complicated. You can use squid, though, so you can navigate from your VPS and forward the data to your home over IPv4.