Is it possible (and reasonably straightforward) to get a Nokia N900 to connect to a Windows PPTP VPN and to an L2TP (using pre-shared key rather than certificate) VPN?

I've seen various tantalising posts of people happily announcing that they've got it working and giving no hints as to how and quite a lot of instructions/pointers which simply don't work (for example, referring to packages which aren't in the respositories mentioned - perhaps because they refer to older versions of maemo).

The lack of "native" VPN support in Maemo 5 is one of the only two baffling things about my otherwise amazing N900 (the other is the apparent complete inability to see "/" from any of the native Nokia apps - like PDF viewer and so on which is a PITA if you work in XTerm a lot), given that I have TeX, OCaml, RDesktop and myriad other useful tools happily installed.

It's not possible for me to alter either of the VPN Servers that I wish to connect to so answers that involve changing the VPN are worthless, I'm afraid.

What I'm really after is either "yes this can be done, here is how" or "no, it's physically impossible - bad luck."

Hoping that someone can give one of those two answers. Also hoping that my searches haven't just failed to hit an obvious page containing this answer already but I have tried to look!

I'm on a pathetic connection, so wont answer fully now, but PPTP VPN works fabulously, connects automatically or manually. But it takes a bit to fiddle the old style setup scripts.

Sorry ... will submit my instructions tomorrow when online. Added: and there they are in post #4.

Original instructions here:
http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=36172&page=2
but very hard to follow for non-expert.

You can also try to vote for an easier way, on this brainstorm:

http://maemo.org/community/brainstor...ction_manager/

Attached is my basic attempt at making PPTP VPN work nicely. This includes scripts for DBus, Upstart and the application manager. i.e.,
* so you have a VPN icon in menus and/or desktop
* to bring PPTP VPN up automatically when you walk into Wifi range
* to shut things down when not in use
All the hard work was done by Fanoush and documented on previous threads.

Note this is not packaged properly for ease of install. That really requires figuring out some more things. e.g., PPTP parameter settings difficult to set.

Enjoy.

Note the iPhone guys at work stopped using our VPN and instead just use their own wireless data ... so score one for Maemo.

This looks great thanks (just downloaded your tarball) - I'm abroad at the moment so will have a go in a day or two when risking bricking my phone won't be such a catastrophe!

How do i install this ?

I use titan's kernel-power kernel which included PPP/MPPE kernel module support.

from this link, you can find pppd/pptp utilities and config guide.

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=36172&page=2

I have successfully configed my PPTP VPN support for months

hi,

Do I still need to install the kernel modules for kernel 2.6.28.10power37 ?

Cheers

@thorstone No. Power Kernel already comes with the required modules and also do the "insmod" thing automatically.

so you only need to worry to install the missing debs

and then pptpconfig

Will there be a GUI for PPTP ever? I use a PPTP vpn on windows but I am totally lost with Maemo. I have Enhanced Linux kernel for powers users 2.6.28.10 installed but other then that I dont know how to go about setting up the PPTP. I am worried i'd brick my device and make it unusable

I am not a linux expert unfortunately.