Creating stable, automatically reconnecting PPTP connection in Ubuntu

Question

I've been using network-manager-pptp to create a PPTP VPN connection in my Ubuntu virtual machine for a while now, but I have constant problems with random disconnects. I don't know what the cause of the problem is, but I suspect that network-manager-pptp is not the most well-written piece of software around...

Is there another way of instantiating PPTP connections in a more robust manner? The same PPTP server works reasonably OK with Windows 7 (some disconnects, fewer than in Ubuntu, and Windows has an auto-reconnect feature).

I read some guides on using the pptp command, but they all seemed pretty low-level, messing around with ppp. I never found the time to figure out how it all was supposed to fit together. Has anyone accomplished what I'm trying and is willing to share the knowledge?

EDIT: Tried kvpnc, and it seems the stability is more or less the same as network-manager-pptp. The error message is "Modem hangup".

To clarify, I understand that the connection can go down, but I want to be able to reconnect automatically when disconnected.

Answer 1

Yes, Use kvpnc. It works well, is much more advanced than NM's VPN support, and can automatically reconnect upon a disconnect.

sudo aptitude install kvpnc

note that you may have to install some other packages such as pptp-linux. Check the kvpnc settings for more info.