Centos – PPTP works on Debian 6.0 but not Debian 5.0 or CentOS

centosdebianpptpvpn

I installed PPTP successfully on a Debian 6.0 64-bit machine, and tried to mimic the installation on both a Debian 5.0 machine, and a CentOS machine. However, I get error codes on connecting with both of those latter machines. The error codes are: 809 and 619. They differ as I hit the "retry" button.

I don't understand why it works on Debian 6.0, while the other two don't, even though they have the exact same configuration.

I already verified the ports are open and reachable externally. I did the following to install the VPN software:

Step 1: Installing pptpd – the pptpd is the daemon that runs the pptp
server. To install this just use apt-get:

$ aptitude install pptpd

Step 2: Next you will need to modify the pptpd.conf

$ vim /etc/pptpd.conf

Then scroll down to the bottom and modify the following lines with the
subnets you would like assigned:

# (Recommended)
#localip 192.168.0.1
#remoteip 192.168.0.234-238,192.168.0.245
# or
localip 10.0.0.1
remoteip 10.0.0.21-41,10.0.0.51

(Recommended) Edit /etc/ppp/options and add google's opendns addresses

ms-dns 8.8.8.8
ms-dns 8.8.4.4

Step 3: The vpn server is now configured and now you must setup
authenticated users:

$ vim /etc/ppp/chap-secrets

The config file is very straight forward and I have an example of a
user included:

# Secrets for authentication using CHAP
# client server secret IP addresses
johndoe pptpd johndoepassword *

Step 4: When pptpd was installed it started automatically so we will need
to restart it to apply the changes:

$ /etc/init.d/pptpd restart

Now, if you would like to add internet access over this vpn, you can
do this:

$ vim /etc/sysctl.conf

and find the line for ipv4 forwarding and make sure it = 1:

Uncomment the next line to enable packet forwarding for IPv4

net.ipv4.ip_forward=1

Then use iptables to get the net forwarded:

$ /sbin/iptables -P FORWARD ACCEPT
$ /sbin/iptables --table nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE

Update1:
Log file sais the following: Couldnt open the /dev/ppp device no such file or directory

snapshot of log

Update2:
It seems the kernel is the problem, I received the message "sorry this system lacks ppp kernel support" and since this is a vps running op OpenVZ I can't alter the kernel (OpenVZ kernel is shared). Not wonder the Debian6 one did work, that's a dedicated server. I guess I have to get openvpn working after all 🙁

Best Answer

It seems the kernel is the problem, I received the message "sorry this system lacks ppp kernel support" and since this is a vps running op OpenVZ I can't alter the kernel (OpenVZ kernel is shared). Not wonder the Debian6 one did work, that's a dedicated server. I guess I have to get openvpn working after all :(

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