pptp

Establish PPTP VPN tunnel connections

TLDR

Connect to a PPTP VPN server

$ pptp [server] --nolaunchpppd

Connect with debug output

$ pptp [server] debug

Connect with increased log verbosity

$ pptp [server] --loglevel [3]

SYNOPSIS

pptp server [options] [pppd-options]

pptp establishes VPN connections using the Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol. It creates a tunnel to a remote PPTP server by wrapping PPP sessions inside GRE (Generic Routing Encapsulation) packets.The client works in conjunction with pppd which handles the PPP negotiation and authentication within the tunnel. Any options not recognized by pptp are passed to pppd. PPTP is considered a legacy protocol with known security weaknesses, and modern alternatives like OpenVPN or WireGuard are recommended for new deployments.

PARAMETERS

server

IP address or hostname of the PPTP server.

--nolaunchpppd

Do not launch pppd; use when pppd is launched independently.

--phone number

Pass the phone number to the remote host (used by some servers for call identification).

--loglevel N

Set logging verbosity (0=least, 3=most).

debug

Enable debug mode, outputting additional diagnostics.

--quirks quirk

Work around bugs in specific PPTP implementations (e.g., BEZEQ_ISRAEL).

--timeout seconds

Time to wait for a connection reply from the server.

CAVEATS

PPTP has known cryptographic weaknesses (MS-CHAPv2 and MPPE vulnerabilities). It should not be used for security-sensitive connections. Use OpenVPN or WireGuard instead. Requires the ip_gre kernel module to be loaded.

HISTORY

PPTP was developed by Microsoft and several other companies for VPN connections in the 1990s. The Linux client implementation is part of the pptp-linux project.