pptp.8

.\" SH section heading
.\" SS subsection heading
.\" LP paragraph
.\" IP indented paragraph
.\" TP hanging label
.TH PPTP 8
.\" NAME should be all caps, SECTION should be 1-8, maybe w/ subsection
.\" other parms are allowed: see man(7), man(1)
.SH NAME
pptp \- PPTP driver
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B pptp
.I "<pptp-server-IP> <pptp-options> [ppp-options] ..."
.SH "DESCRIPTION"
.LP
.B pptp
establishes the client side of a Virtual Private Network (VPN) using
the Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP).  Use this program to
connect to an employer's PPTP based VPN, or to certain cable and ADSL
service providers.
.LP
By default, \fBpptp\fR establishes the PPTP call to the PPTP server,
and then starts an instance of \fBpppd\fR to manage the data transfer.
However, \fBpptp\fR can also be run as a connection manager within
\fBpppd\fR.
.SH OPTIONS
.LP
The first non\-option argument on the \fBpptp\fR command line must be the host
name or IP address of the PPTP server.
.LP
All long options (starting with "\-\-")
are interpreted as pptp options, and a fatal error occurs if an 
unrecognised option is used.
.LP
All command\-line arguments which do not start
with "\-" are interpreted as ppp options, and passed as is to \fBpppd\fR unless
\fB\-\-nolaunchpppd\fR is given.
.TP
.B \-\-phone <number>
Pass <number> to remote host as phone number
.TP
.B \-\-nolaunchpppd
Do not launch
.B pppd
but use stdin as the network connection.  Use this flag when including
.B pptp
as a
.B pppd
connection process using the
.B pty
option.  See EXAMPLES.
.TP
.B \-\-quirks <quirk>
Work around a buggy PPTP implementation, adopts special case handling for
particular PPTP servers and ADSL modems.
Currently recognised values are BEZEQ_ISRAEL only
.TP
.B \-\-debug
Run in foreground (for debugging with gdb)
.TP
.B \-\-sync
Enable Synchronous HDLC (pppd must use it too)
.TP
.B \-\-timeout <secs>
Time to wait for reordered packets (0.01 to 10 secs)
.TP
.B \-\-nobuffer
Completely disables buffering and reordering of packets.
Any \-\-timeout specified will be ignored.
.TP
.B \-\-idle-wait <secs>
Time to wait before sending a control connection echo request.
The RFC2637 default is 60 seconds.
.TP
.B \-\-max-echo-wait <secs>
Time to wait for an echo reply before closing the control connection.
The RFC2637 default is 60 seconds.
.TP
.B \-\-logstring <name>
Use <name> instead of 'anon' in syslog messages
.TP
.B \-\-localbind <addr>
Bind to specified IP address instead of wildcard
.TP
.B \-\-rtmark <n>
Use specified policy routing mark for all packets.
This causes both the TCP control connection's packets as well as the
GRE packets to bear the given policy routing / netfilter mark. This
can be used with
.I ip rule
(from iproute2) to use a separate routing table for the pptp client.

(requires root privileges or the CAP_NET_ADMIN capability.)
.TP
.B \-\-nohostroute
Do not configure a host route pointing towards the PPTP server.
(cf. ROUTING below)

.TP
.B \-\-loglevel <level>
Sets the debugging level (0=low, 1=default, 2=high)

.TP
.B \-\-test-type <n>
Enable packet reordering tests that damage the integrity of the packet
stream to the server.  Use this only when testing servers.  Zero is
the default, and means that packets are sent in the correct order.  A
value of one (1) causes a single swap between two packets, such that
the sequence numbers might be 1 2 3 4 6 5 7 8 9.  A value of two (2)
causes ten packets to be buffered, then sent out of order but
ascending, such that the sequence numbers might be 1 2 3 4 16 6 7 8 9
10 11 12 13 14 15 17 18 19 20.  A value of three (3) causes ten
packets to be buffered, then sent in the reverse order, like this; 1 2
3 4 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 17 18 19 20.

.TP
.B \-\-test-rate <n>
Sets the number of packets to pass before causing a reordering test.
Default is 100.  Has no effect if test-type is zero.  The result of
test types 2 and 3 are undefined if this value is less than ten.

.TP
.B \-\-missing-window <n>
Enable 'missing window' validation and set packet tolerance
(300=default, 6000=recommended).

.TP
.B \-\-version
Display version.


.SH "ROUTING"
When PPTP is used in conjunction with a default route on top of the
tunnel (or just any route encompassing the PPTP server),
the mechanics of routing would cause the PPTP packets themselves
to be routed over the tunnel. This would result in an encapsulation
loop, destroying connectivity.

.B pptp
by default works around this by looking up the route towards the
PPTP server at startup and configures a host route with that data.
This essentially "freezes" routing for PPTP packets at the startup
configuration. This behaviour can be disabled with
.B --nohostroute
if undesired (like when using
.B --rtmark
to implement policy routing).

.B NB:
the route added by
.B pptp
is currently not deleted at exit!

.SH "QUIRKS"

.TP
.B BEZEQ_ISRAEL
modifies packets to interoperate with Orckit ADSL modems on the BEZEQ
network in Israel.

.SH "EXAMPLES"

.B Connection to a Microsoft Windows VPN Server

.BR
pppd noauth nobsdcomp nodeflate require\-mppe\-128 name domain\\\\\\\\username remotename PPTP pty "pptp 10.0.0.5 \-\-nolaunchpppd"
.PP
Note that the \fBchap\-secrets\fR file used by \fBpppd\fR must include an entry for domain\\\\username

.SH "STATISTICS"
The pptp process collects statistics when sending and receiving
GRE packets. They are intended to be useful for debugging poor PPTP
performance and for general monitoring of link quality. The statistics
are cumulative since the pptp process was started.
.PP
The statistics can be viewed by sending a SIGUSR1 signal to the
"GRE-to-PPP Gateway" process, which will cause it to dump them
to the system logs (at the LOG_NOTICE level). A better way to present
the statistics to applications is being sought (e.g. SNMP?).
.PP
The following statistics are collected at the time of writing (April 2003):
.TP
.B rx accepted
the number of GRE packets successfully passed to PPP
.TP
.B rx lost
the number of packets never received, and presumed lost in the network
.TP
.B rx under win
the number of packets which were duplicates or had old sequence numbers
(this might be caused by a packet-reordering network if your reordering
timeout is set too low)
.TP
.B rx over win
the number of packets which were too far ahead in the sequence to be
reordered (might be caused by loss of more than 300 packets in a row)
.TP
.B rx buffered
the number of packets which were slightly ahead of sequence, and were
either buffered for reordering, or if buffering is disabled, accepted
immediately (resulting in the intermediate packets being discarded).
.TP
.B rx OS errors
the number of times where the operating system reported an error when
we tried to read a packet
.TP
.B rx truncated
the number of times we received a packet which was shorter than the
length implied by the GRE header
.TP
.B rx invalid
the number of times we received a packet which had invalid or unsupported
flags set in the header, wrong version, or wrong protocol.
.TP
.B rx acks
the number of pure acknowledgements received (without data). Too many
of these will waste bandwidth, and might be solved by tuning the remote host.
.TP
.B tx sent
the number of GRE packets sent with data
.TP
.B tx failed
the number of packets we tried to send, but the OS reported an error
.TP
.B tx short
the number of times the OS would not let us write a complete packet
.TP
.B tx acks
the number of times we sent a pure ack, without data
.TP
.B tx oversize
the number of times we couldn't send a packet because it was over
PACKET_MAX bytes long
.TP
.B round trip
the estimated round-trip time in milliseconds

.SH "SEE ALSO"
.IR pppd (8)
.PP
Documentation in
.IR /usr/share/doc/pptp
.SH AUTHOR
This manual page was written by James Cameron
<james.cameron@hp.com> from text contributed by Thomas Quinot
<thomas@debian.org>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system.
The description of the available statistics was written by Chris Wilson
<chris@netservers.co.uk>. Updates for the Debian distribution by
Ola Lundqvist <opal@debian.org>.