Compiling MPPE support into debian

After a powercut, I had to rebuild my kernel — I needed MPPE support for VPN, and I have here a collection of handy links.

Yup, something which took me the best part of three days the first time to get working now has a fair set of useful links.

• Visit Adam Hooper’s setup guide to prepare a patched kernel (I used 2.6.10 with no ill effect).
• The official pptpclient page also has debian MPPE patch instructions, though I found them a bit more wordy than I would have liked.
• A godsend, the fault tree on the pptpclient page.

The main thing that gets me is the ridiculously over-complicated make-kpkg part. I’m so used to just rolling my own kernels I never did quite get with the debian ‘helpful’ tool to do it. But, when in Rome…

I ended up using this:

make-kpkg --added-patches mppe --append-to-version mppe --config menuconfig configure
make-kpkg --added-patches mppe --append-to-version mppe --config menuconfig kernel_image

For those lost in the mess of kernel configs, the main ones to worry about are in Device Drivers/Networking support then scroll to PPP.

I’m now back with a working MPPE VPN setup, and in no time at all!