Debian Squeeze - linux-pptp

[sky-knight]

So I'm trying to get a new VM going to monitor a new client's network. They use Mikrotik routers supplied and supported by their ISP to connect all five sites to each other.

Now the Mikrotik at the main office has a PPTP service running on it I can connect to and manage all five locations. I'm trying to configure a Debian VM to run OpenNMS over a PPTP tunnel to monitor that site, and possibly the rest.

I've got the PPTP software configured, I've got it connecting, I've got interfaces in /etc/networking/interfaces setup so all I have to do is ifup vpn and ifdown vpn to turn the interface in question on and off, and it adds / removes the appropriate routes.

In short, the bloody thing works perfectly EXCEPT, it won't start that darn ppp0 interface on boot. Right after boot if I try to ifup vpn, it says vpn is already configured, but ifconfig shows no ppp0 interface. If I ifdown vpn, then ifup vpn the ppp0 interface pops up and life is good.

So the question is, how do I get this darn thing to run on boot? I'm assuming I'm having issues because Debian isn't cranking up ppp0 after eth0, or eth0 is taking too long to start and ppp0 is stuck waiting.

Anyone out there attempted anything remotely like this? If I had an Untangle over there OpenVPN would have had me working hours ago...

[sky-knight]

Eh screw it, just called their support to get OpenVPN turned on in that Mikrotik. When in doubt, use what works.

[jcoehoorn]

If ifdown then ifup always works, what was preventing you from issuing those commands in sequence in a script that runs during startup?

[sky-knight]

I put them at the end of rc.local which is the very last thing to run during boot, and it still didn't work.

I'm willing to bet the issue is eth0 is DHCP assigned, if I got unlazy and kicked it to static eth0 would be active far sooner. With DCHP active I don't think eth0 is ready until sometime after boot is finished.

[sky-knight]

For the curious, setting eth0 to static fixed it. So it does appear to be a simple issue of the ppp0 interface being dependent on eth0, and eth0 was taking too long to get DHCP configuration details.

A script with a delay in it would have fixed this I think.