[ltp] VPN to MS via Linux

[Adam Southerland]

My job has a VPN setup and I have accessed it from Windows XP/2000 Pro... 
Now I am using my Laptop more and more and would rather use it for 
everything. I am doing what I can to find and install applications near 
equal with my windows counterpart.

Personally I love being able to shutdown part of my PC without hanging other 
applications. Can't stand the New bug, not being able to rename/delete files 
and folders constantly... So I have been attempting to run Linux 
completely...   If I can get everything I do to either have a counterpart or 
get Wine to run it then my friends would go to Linux as well =) hehe -- Got 
off subject there... (Whole point was to say the I am knowledgeable in 
Windows and everyone I know has Windows setups so Getting Windows to play 
nice with Linux is my end goal...)

I'll be studing MS's VPN specs to see what it uses and then look for the 
Linux Equivalent... It should exist... I hope... (If you know you could save 
me a little time =) hehe

Note: I haven't read the How-to yet, it might tell me. (Installing Perl to 
get Webmail working on my box)

Thanks!!! =)

Adam


----Original Message Follows----
From: Tod Harter <tharter@rhombus.net>
Reply-To: linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org
To: linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org
Subject: Re: [ltp] VPN to MS via Linux
Date: Wed, 2 Jul 2003 15:49:09 -0400

Well, there are a lot of ways to skin that cat. If you can run an openSSH 
(or
commercial ssh for that matter) server on the windows box, then you easily
have what you need, a secure encrypted tunnel. Technically its not a VPN in
the sense that you can route network traffic through it, but you can run the
ssh client on your Linux box and bounce the packets across the network.

An invocation of ssh like:

ssh -N -L 1234:windowsbox:4567 windowsbox &

would run an ssh in the background that would forward all traffic directed 
to
local port 1234 across the network to windowsbox port 4567. That works good
for simple applications like web. You can also run ssh in SOCKS mode by 
using
the -D parameter. So:

ssh -N -D 12345 windowsbox &

would background an ssh that would act as a SOCKS 4/5 proxy and dynamic
forward to windowsbox. Of course then you need a SOCKS aware application...

As far as TRUE VPNs go, IPSEC is really the way to go. There are some good
toold for Linux for it. I would assume its built into windows or you can
install it there easily enough. Its more complex to set up, and I don't know
the compatibility with windows (not being cursed with supporting it much),
but its been around a while and should in theory work fine. FreeS/WAN seems
to be the tool of choice for setting it up these days...

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