[Sandbox] Add PPTP (VPN) support for Connnection Manager

[soeiro]

Brainstorm:

http://maemo.org/community/brainstorm/view/add_pptp-vpn-support_for_connnection_manager/

N900 - Maemo 5 (and others)

PPTP is a VPN protocol that is found everywhere, mainly because it is easy to setup in the Windows world. It may not be the best VPN out there, but there are lots of people would would benefit from being able to easily connect to their coporate network.

PPTP (and maybe others, like OpenVPN) should somehow be added to the Connection Manager. There should be possible for the user to associate a connection (GPRS, Wifi, etc) with PPTP so that it can be used in an easy manner.

Desktop Linux has it, Windows mobile has it, iPhone has it and Windows client also has it.

There is a lot of discussion on how to enable PPTP on the N900 device. However: no solution was very user friendly (lots of terminal commandas and hacking) and 2) there was not a brainstorm for it.

[qgil]

Some background links:

Talk: N900 PPTP VPN with MPPE (http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=36172)

Bugzilla: Support PPTP and L2TP out of the box
(https://bugs.maemo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4453)
OS2007 Download (http://maemo.org/downloads/product/OS2007/pptpclient/)

Just in case this is useful (I don't know much about VPN protocols):

Maemo 5 Downloads: OpenVPN Applet (http://maemo.org/downloads/product/Maemo5/openvpn-applet/)

So I guess this brainstorm proposal needs to address two steps:

1. Enablers in place.
2. Simple UI to manage connections.

[mikkov]

Just in case this is useful (I don't know much about VPN protocols):

Maemo 5 Downloads: OpenVPN Applet (http://maemo.org/downloads/product/Maemo5/openvpn-applet/)


No, OpenVPN has nothing to do with PPTP. OpenVPN is SSL/TLS based user-space VPN and it's compatible only with itself. And OpenVPN Applet supports only OpenVPN

[Matan]

It is already easily doable. You add a dummy connection, and use dbus-scripts to run the script that connects to pptp when this dummy network is connected, and run the disconnection script when this dummy network is disconnected. I used to do it on N800/N810 when BGU's network used pptp, and I do it now on N900 for bluetooth DUN client connection.

It is a pity that Nokia decided to make dummy network module such a pain to get, but there is an almost compatible free replacement.

You can see the bluetooth-dun-client package on my repository for an example of how it is done.

[kaz911]

It is already easily doable. You add a dummy connection, and use dbus-scripts to run the script that connects to pptp when this dummy network is connected, and run the disconnection script when this dummy network is disconnected. I used to do it on N800/N810 when BGU's network used pptp, and I do it now on N900 for bluetooth DUN client connection.

It is a pity that Nokia decided to make dummy network module such a pain to get, but there is an almost compatible free replacement.

You can see the bluetooth-dun-client package on my repository for an example of how it is done.

Well remember easily is different from person to person. :-) And does the solution enable to use remote gateway as default gateway on both wife and GSM interface?

Anyway kernel support should be enabled as it is in normal Debian.

[pepitoe]

It would be nice also to support Cisco vpns out of the box like a certain other device does, not sure if that would be best in a seperate proposal?

[TA-t3]

Cisco VPN is already supported. There are apparently two different types of Cisco VPN. One is handled by the 'vpnc' package, the other by the 'openconnect' package. Figure out what you need, then install one of them and also the matching -gui package.

[pepitoe]

I am aware of them, openconnect is not bad, but vpnc is still in extras-devel and the gui needs some work. If PPTP VPN support was added to the connection manager, other common vpns like Cisco should be also to ensure consistant and easy to use vpn support in maemo. Perhaps there should be some kind of plugin vpn support in connection manager for Maemo 6, so that support for different VPNs can all be handled the same way.

[stefanmohl]

I added a third solution suggestion for how to access this functionality:

Solution #3: Enforce PPTP usage

Posted on 2010-02-09 03:34 UTC by Stefan Möhl.

One use-case for a VPN is when I visit other companies and don't want them to have a full log of where I surf while using their WLAN. Once I have an open VPN connection to my own office I can surf to companies that compete with the one I am visiting without them knowing. Unfortunately, on Windows, if the VPN goes down you can still go on surfing, even if your "armour" is lost.



Though your home-office network becomes unavailable (yes, I know, the primary use-case for a VPN), the secondary use-case: Anonymizing and hiding your network activities, is (sometimes silently) lost.



By adding the VPN as a new network connection and forbidding automatic connection to other networks, this situation could be avoided. Could we do this for the N900? If anyone knows how to solve my problem in Windows, I am interested too :-)