How to install and configure VPN with PPTP (Poptop)

VPN (Vitual Private Network) is extensively used to access workplace with security. So Let me briefly go through installation and configuration settings.

Potop is a package by using which you can creates VPN. You can download package from web or you can install it by using yum commands on shell.

yum install pptp

Once the installation is completed, you can find Poptop's configuration files located in /etc directory. There are four configurations which we need to take care in order to work with pptp.

* /etc/ppp/chap-secrets
* /etc/pptp.conf
* /etc/modules.conf
* /etc/ppp/options.pptp


So Lets go through the each file and I will briefly explain about what each file contains.

/etc/pptp.conf

It contains the default configurations of the pptp, like the executable name etc. The default settings of this file work and no change is required except any exceptional scenario.

/etc/modules.conf

It contains the list of installed Poptop modules. You shold not modify this file.

/etc/ppp/chap-secrets


This is the main file that you need to modify. Basically you need to define username and password in this file which will be used to connect to VPN. I have created a test user 'sheraxi'.
——————-

# Secrets for authentication using CHAP
# client server secret IP addresses
sherazi * sherazi *

—————————–

Once changes are completed, run the pptp service by following command:

service pptp restart

Now you can connect to VPN using the user defined in chap-secret file on the main IP address of the server.