vpnd(8) System Manager's Manual vpnd(8)

vpnd — Mac OS X VPN service daemon

vpnd [-d | -n | -x] [-i server_id]

vpnd [-h]

vpnd allows external hosts to tunnel via L2TP over IPSec or via PPTP from an insecure external network (such as the Internet) into a "secure" internal network, such as a corporate network. All traffic through the tunnel is encrypted to provide secure communications, with L2TP/IPSec providing a higher level of security than PPTP.

vpnd listens for incoming connections, pairs each one with an available internal IP address, and passes the connection to pppd(8) with appropriate parameters. Parameters for vpnd are specified in a system configuration (plist) file in XML format. This file contains a dictionary of configurations each identified by a key referred to as a server_id. Parameters include the tunneling protocol, IP addresses to be assigned to clients, PPP parameters etc.

vpnd is launched for a particular configuration by using the -i option which takes the server_id to be run as an argument. vpnd can also be run without the -i option. In this case it will check the configuration file for a special array which contains a list of configurations to be run and will fork and exec a copy of vpnd for each server_id to be run. Running multiple vpnd processes simultaneously for a particular protocol is not allowed.

vpnd will be launched during the boot process by a startup item if the field VPNSERVER is defined in /etc/hostconfig with the value -YES-. Typically, in this case it will be launched without the -i option and will check the configuration file to determine which configuration(s) are to be run.

vpnd logs items of interest to the system log. A different log path can be specified in the configuration file.

The following options are available:

Do not move to background and print log strings to the terminal.
Print usage summary and exit.
Server_id in the plist file that defines the configuration to be run.
Do not move to background, print log information to the terminal, and quit after validating the argument list.
Do not move to background.

The default invocation,

vpnd

will read the list of configurations to run from the configuration file and launch them. This default configuration may be enabled at startup by defining VPNSERVER to -YES-.

To specify a particular configuration to run use

vpnd -i server_id

/usr/sbin/vpnd
/etc/hostconfig
/System/Library/StartupItems/NetworkExtensions
/Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/com.apple.RemoteAccessServers.plist

pppd(8) vpnd(5)

21 August 2003 Mac OS X