[pptp-server] Debian pptp package?

[Neale Banks]

On Mon, 19 Feb 2001, Chris Wood wrote:

> I noticed that Debian has the pptp package now.  Does anyone know what
> level of encryption it uses?  I know some of the patches I applied were to
> ppp itself.  Life would be simpler if I could use the Debian package and
> dselect, since last time I ran dselect it updated my ppp which broke my
> pptp setup.

As someone who has dabbled around the edges of these kind of issues, some
random thoughts which may help (and apologies if you know this already):

* rebuilding a Debian packages from the sources is near-trivial, naturally
the package you rebuild can be patched and/or built with different options
from the "official" (change the pkg version# by adding an entry at the top
of debian/changelog).

* obviously the encryption is in ppp itself.  In the first instance you
might want to patch and rebuild the Debian pppd package as AFAIK there is
no encryption at all in the pppd in "main" and no pppd in "non-US".

* if the pptp package was built with options that don't suit, grab the
source, edit the build options and rebuild.  Similarly if you are running
say "stable" but want a later version check if it's in "testing" or
"unstable" and if so often you can grab those sources and rebuild on and
for your platform (one gotcha is if the later package depends on libs that
aren't in "stable", but I don't expect that will apply here.

* to stop dselect upgrading custom package, just put it on hold ("=").

One caution: going down these paths means you re generally stepping
outside the safety net of the security updates that appear for "stable" -
this is not a problem so long as you keep vigilant about the security
alerts that are appearing.

HTH,
Neale.