Setting up Mac OS X Server as VPN Endpoint - Mavricks Server 10.9

General

Setup server DNS if you have to – tools below to check
Turn on VPN (L2TP and PPTP is what i did)
Make Open Directory Users …
- and group if you are using sharing and assign these users to the group
PPTP?
- Setup different NON local users in Open Directory
- then set the services they have access to.
- Great video here.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gG8HcsQuyjI
L2TP – local users can access using this protocol
unblock ports and port forward ports router
- PPTP TCP 1723 with Protocol 47 or “GRE”
- L2TP UDP 500
- http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1629
- http://blogs.technet.com/b/rrasblog/archive/2006/06/14/which-ports-to-unblock-for-vpn-traffic-to-pass-through.aspx
- use ipchicken.com to get your ip address
Set up your client – this is SUPER article with the tweaks and pitfalls to watch out for – scroll down to the client setup part

Here is the nitty gritty.

setup DNS either outside your network (advanced) or
- or you have to setup DNS on the server to point to itself and then the router and/or external DNS – you can use google 8.8.8.8
- if you don’t do this – the command changeip -checkhostname will give diff Current HostName and DNS Hostnames – this is not good
- you should see

bash-3.2# changeip -checkhostname

Primary address = 192.168.2.2

Current HostName = machinename.subdomain.mydomainthatibought.com
DNS HostName = machinename.subdomain.mydomainthatibought.com

The names match. There is nothing to change.
dirserv:success = “success”

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if the DNS HostName is not what it should be – set up DNS – because the computer is traversing DNS servers and it finds someone has stored the wrong name somewhere. So if it is your router and you can clear it, great – otherwise you have to work around this- well setting up your own DNS server is best. Follow this advice http://labs.hoffmanlabs.com/node/1436
Current HostName off? Change it in the main server Settings or run the advice given by the changeip command above.
- /Applications/Server.app/Contents/ServerRoot/usr/sbin/changeip 192.168.1.2 192.168.1.2 wrong.name.com right.name.com

we setup a vpn group and added users to it
configure that group to have access to a file share on the mac (System Prefs -> Sharing ->File Sharing and add that user as Read/Write to that group

This gets PPTP working. Using WIndows you can set up an FTP config and use it with all default settings.

On a mac – there are lots of articles that tell how to do this.