PPTP VPN on MAC OS X Sierra, High Sierra and Mojave

9th of January 2019

PPTP VPN for Mac OS X

Update: For Mac OS X Catalina

For PPTP VPN on Mac OS X Catalina continue here.

Introduction

PPTP VPN is no longer supported on macOS Sierra and High Sierra and that is just fine, because there are some security issues. What is not fine that in corporate environment the inertia is so big, that this can take years to stop using PPTP VPN.

So you have basically 4 options:

change your job
use some of third-party software for example shimovpn (€49)
use my custom made PPTP VPN for mac
DIY

PPTP VPN ON MACOS SIERRA AND HIGH SIERRA NO LONGER AVAILABLE

PPTP VPN ON MACOS SIERRA AND HIGH SIERRA IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE

DIY Solution

Here is video tutorial reproducing following steps.

I’m going to cover the third one here and its quite simple. Open terminal and create file with name of your vpn server in /etc/ppp/peers/

sudo touch /etc/ppp/peers/vpn.yourserver.com

If you get error, because the peers folder doesn’t exist, create it with mkdir /etc/ppp/peers command). Then edit this newly created file

sudo nano /etc/ppp/peers/vpn.yourserver.com

Copy paste and fill your details

plugin PPTP.ppp
noauth
remoteaddress "------vpn.yourserver.com------"
user "------USERNAME------"
password "------PASSWORD------"
redialcount 1
redialtimer 5
idle 1800
# mru 1368
# mtu 1368
receive-all
novj 0:0
ipcp-accept-local
ipcp-accept-remote
refuse-eap
refuse-pap
refuse-chap-md5
hide-password
mppe-stateless
mppe-128
# require-mppe-128
looplocal
nodetach
ms-dns 8.8.8.8
usepeerdns
# ipparam gwvpn
defaultroute
debug

And finally run pppd deamon

sudo pppd call vpn.yourserver.com

If you get PPTP error when reading socket : EOF just try run the command again, or comment out the the line with ms-dns 8.8.8.8

Alternatively you can create this file anywhere and run it as

sudo pppd file ~/Desktop/path-to-your-file/vpn.txt

Automator

You can automate it with Automator. Just drag and drop “Run AppleScript” from left pane. And insert following line:

do shell script "pppd call VPN.YOURSERVER.COM" with administrator privileges

Now save it to Application folder and you can run it as regular app. It will ask you for administrator privileges every time because it runs pppd command. When you run it you can see little gear in you status bar indicating VPN runs and get error prompt any time VPM fails.

Download VPN.app

If you want to have nice shiny app that let you connect to VPN and that you can control from menu bar, instead of writing commands again and again in terminal, you can download this one for price of 1 coffee.

After you download, you have to right-click and open to run it.

DOWNLOAD