[afnog] Help on setting up PPPoE server on FreeBSD

[Aklei G. Kessy]

Thanks Brian,
The instruction you sent was really useful. am newbie to FreeBSD and i want to 
get the most out of its wonderfully power and featurest. forgive me for not 
googling and digging enough.
I managed to get the userland pppoe working with my FreeBSD 5.3 as a server 
and windows client running RASPPPoE, currently using ppp.secret file to 
authenticate incoming connection. 
I'm currently digging out on how to get Radiator radius working for 
authentication/accounting information.

As soon  as i get this done I'll come back with the detailed procedure on how 
i get PPPoE+radius working.

regards

aklei


On Saturday 23 April 2005 12:32, Brian Candler wrote:
> On Sat, Apr 23, 2005 at 11:12:16AM +0300, Aklei G. Kessy wrote:
> > I need help on setting up a PPPoE server on my FreeBSD box, i've googled
> > and only got this document http://www.rensel.com/wireless/pppoe.cfm
> > I followed the instruction but didn't work. I'd appreciate your help
>
> You need to give much more information than "didn't work", since there are
> lots of things which might be wrong, and we can't help you without having
> visibility of your problem.
>
> How did you test it? What client were you using? Did the client show any
> error message? Did the server show any messages in any log files? Did you
> monitor the ethernet traffic with tcpdump, and if so, what did you see? If
> not, then you should do so:
>     # tcpdump -i fxp0 -n -s1500 -X
> (replace fxp0 with your network interface)
>
> Note also that the document you found talks about FreeBSD version 4.0,
> which is very old. I don't think you looked very hard, because within a few
> seconds I found this:
>
> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/pppoe.html
> (I just went to www.freebsd.org and entered 'pppoe' into the search box)
>
> This shows a pppoe client, but this is a useful starting point, especially
> if you can set up two FreeBSD boxes side by side. You are much likely to
> get better error reporting from a FreeBSD client than a Windoze one.
>
> Then going to google and entering "freebsd pppoe server", I got lots of
> useful stuff. The first hit was the document you found, and the second was
> the handbook page I just gave, but the third page was this one:
>
> http://www.jraitala.net/comp/articles/2002/pppoe/
>
> which gives a lot of clues. In particular, it tells you that there are two
> types of ppp (kernel and userland), which you should already know from
> reading the handbook ppp chapter; and then it says that for a kernel-mode
> ppp server you need a package called "mpd". So, go to /usr/ports/net/mpd
> and read pkg-descr (if you have the ports collection installed; otherwise
> go to www.freebsd.org, click on 'ported software', and enter mpd into the
> search box)
>
> However, the other very useful resource you have is the man pages. On a
> FreeBSD 5-STABLE box I typed the following:
>
> # man -k pppoe
> ng_pppoe(4)              - RFC 2516 PPPoE protocol netgraph node type
> pppoed(8)                - handle incoming PPP over Ethernet connections
>
> Ah, so there is a daemon already supplied with FreeBSD called "pppoed", and
> it looks like it wil do exactly what you want.
>
> "man pppoed" gives you information on how to run it, and it turns out this
> is for the userland ppp implementation. Essentially, you need to set up
> /etc/ppp in the same way as you would for a dialup ppp server (which the
> FreeBSD handbook explains), then you run pppoed instead of using getty or
> mgetty to accept incoming calls. pppoed starts an instance of
> /usr/sbin/ppp for each incoming pppoe connection.
>
> So what I suggest is you go through each of the resources listed above,
> learn how the various bits work, and try to put them together. I suggest
> you start with the userland ppp approach, since
> (a) all the bits you need come with a standard FreeBSD install;
> (b) it's probably simpler to set up;
> (c) there's better documentation of the userland ppp approach;
> even though the article I found says that its performance isn't as good as
> kernel ppp. You can try that too, of course.
>
> Then, if you can't get it to work, come back here and give a *detailled*
> description of what you did. That is:
>
> - which FreeBSD version you are running (make sure it's recent, i.e.
>   5.3/5-STABLE or 4.11)
> - whether you are trying to use the userland or kernel ppp implementation
> - what config files you created, and their exact contents
> - exactly what commands you typed to start the appropriate daemons
> - what clients you tried to connect with, and what you saw happen
>   (both at the client side, and any logs at the server side)
> - the tcpdump output showing the pppoe packets going in and out
>
> That may allow us to spot what's happening, or else give further
> suggestions (such as how to turn on additional logging).
>
> And of course, if you *do* make it work successfully, then please come back
> anyway and post a summary of what you did, so that other people can benefit
> from it when browsing the list archives.
>
> Regards,
>
> Brian.

-- 
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
+   George Aklei Kessy					
+   CTO							
+   AFAM LTD						
+   Arusha, Tanzania					
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
"A man is but a product of his thoughts;
 what he thinks, that he becomes."