PPTP/PoPToP Yum Repositories

The details of how to set up the PPTP/PoPToP repositories vary from distribution to distribution. Please see the section for your particular distribution. Distributions not explicitly listed here are not supported.

The only supported architectures are i386 for Fedora Core 3, and i386 and x86_64 for Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Fedora Core release 4 onwards.

Basic Installation Instructions

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4

In Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, up2date is the supported tool rather than yum. We assume that up2date is already installed and configured.

Install the pptp-release package:

This will automatically install the GPG key used to sign packages in the PPTP/PoPToP repositories. You then need to add the repositories to your /etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources file, which you can do by appending the contents of the file /usr/share/doc/pptp-release-*/pptp.repo.rhel4 to /etc/sysconfig/rhn/sources

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and later releases

The yum tool is installed by default.

Install the pptp-release package as follows:

(replace rhel5 with rhel6 for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 etc.)

This will automatically configure yum to use the PPTP/PoPToP repositories, by installing a file /etc/yum.repos.d/pptp.repo

The first time you install a package from the PPTP/PoPToP repositories, you will be prompted to import the GPG key used to sign packages in the PPTP/PoPToP repositories.

Fedora Core 3

You first need to install yum if you do not already have it. You can find RPM packages for yum and all of its dependencies on your Fedora Core install media (e.g. CD, DVD). Install it as follows if necessary:

You should then import the GPG key used to sign official Fedora Core packages:

If you have installed yum from release media, you should update yum to the latest errata version, which contains many bugfixes and enhancements:

You then install the pptp-release package:

This will automatically configure yum to use the PPTP/PoPToP repositories, by installing a file /etc/yum.repos.d/pptp.repo

The first time you install a package from the PPTP/PoPToP repositories, you will be prompted to import the GPG key used to sign packages in the PPTP/PoPToP repositories.

Fedora Core 4 and later releases

You first need to install yum if you do not already have it. You can find RPM packages for yum and all of its dependencies on your Fedora Core install media (e.g. CD, DVD). Install it as follows if necessary:

(the precise version/release of the yum package is different for later releases)

You then install the pptp-release package:

(replace fc4 with fc5 for Fedora Core 5 etc.)

This will automatically configure yum to use the PPTP/PoPToP repositories, by installing a file /etc/yum.repos.d/pptp.repo

The first time you install a package from the PPTP/PoPToP repositories, you will be prompted to import the GPG key used to sign packages in the PPTP/PoPToP repositories.

Stable and Beta Repositories

By default, your system is set up to access the "stable" PPTP/PoPToP repositories. There are also "beta" repositories available, which are disabled by default. To enable them, edit the repository configuration file for your distribution and either change "enabled=0" to "enabled=1" (Fedora Core 3 or later) or uncomment the entries for the beta repositories (all other distributions).

Using the Repositories

It is assumed that the yum/up2date program you use is configured to use the default operating system repositories for your distribution, so that required libraries etc. can be found if needed.

Yum

Any package included in the PPTP/PoPToP repositories can be installed using a single yum command, such as:

This will install the package and any necessary dependencies.

Up2date

Any package included in the PPTP/PoPToP repositories can be installed using a single up2date command, such as:

This will install the package and any necessary dependencies.

Package-Specific Notes

MPPE support requires a kernel module to be built unless you are using Linux kernel 2.6.15 or later, which already includes the ppp_mppe module. There are additional requirements that you must first install before doing this.

You will need to install the kernel-devel (or kernel-smp-devel if you are running an SMP kernel) package:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4:

Other distributions:

Having installed these prerequisites, install the kernel_ppp_mppe package:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4:

Other distributions:

This will build and install the ppp_mppe kernel module needed for support of MPPE encryption. It uses dkms to do this.

Author

These notes, and the PPTP/PoPToP repositories, are maintained by Paul Howarth <paul@city-fan.org>. I appreciate any feedback you may have about either.