How To Install xl2tpd on CentOS 8

xl2tpd is Layer 2 Tunnelling Protocol Daemon (RFC 2661)

Introduction

In this tutorial we learn how to install xl2tpd on CentOS 8.

What is xl2tpd

xl2tpd is an implementation of the Layer 2 Tunnelling Protocol (RFC 2661). L2TP allows you to tunnel PPP over UDP. Some ISPs use L2TP to tunnel user sessions from dial-in servers (modem banks, ADSL DSLAMs) to back-end PPP servers. Another important application is Virtual Private Networks where the IPsec protocol is used to secure the L2TP connection (L2TP/IPsec, RFC 3193). The L2TP/IPsec protocol is mainly used by Windows and Mac OS X clients. On Linux, xl2tpd can be used in combination with IPsec implementations such as Openswan. Example configuration files for such a setup are included in this RPM. xl2tpd works by opening a pseudo-tty for communicating with pppd. It runs completely in userspace. xl2tpd supports IPsec SA Reference tracking to enable overlapping internak NAT’ed IP’s by different clients (eg all clients connecting from their linksys internal IP 192.168.1.101) as well as multiple clients behind the same NAT router. xl2tpd supports the pppol2tp kernel mode operations on 2.6.23 or higher, or via a patch in contrib for 2.4.x kernels. Xl2tpd is based on the 0.69 L2TP by Jeff McAdams [email protected] It was de-facto maintained by Jacco de Leeuw [email protected] in 2002 and 2003.

We can use yum or dnf to install xl2tpd on CentOS 8. In this tutorial we discuss both methods but you only need to choose one of method to install xl2tpd.

Install xl2tpd on CentOS 8 Using dnf

Update yum database with dnf using the following command.

sudo dnf makecache --refresh

The output should look something like this:

CentOS Linux 8 - AppStream                                       43 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - BaseOS                                          65 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - ContinuousRelease                               43 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Extras                                          23 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - FastTrack                                       40 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - HighAvailability                                36 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Plus                                            24 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - PowerTools                                      50 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux Modular 8 - x86_64           13 kB/s | 9.2 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64                   24 kB/s | 8.5 kB     00:00    
Metadata cache created.

After updating yum database, We can install xl2tpd using dnf by running the following command:

sudo dnf -y install xl2tpd

Install xl2tpd on CentOS 8 Using yum

Update yum database with yum using the following command.

sudo yum makecache --refresh

The output should look something like this:

CentOS Linux 8 - AppStream                                       43 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - BaseOS                                          65 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - ContinuousRelease                               43 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Extras                                          23 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - FastTrack                                       40 kB/s | 3.0 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - HighAvailability                                36 kB/s | 3.9 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - Plus                                            24 kB/s | 1.5 kB     00:00    
CentOS Linux 8 - PowerTools                                      50 kB/s | 4.3 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux Modular 8 - x86_64           13 kB/s | 9.2 kB     00:00    
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 8 - x86_64                   24 kB/s | 8.5 kB     00:00    
Metadata cache created.

After updating yum database, We can install xl2tpd using yum by running the following command:

sudo yum -y install xl2tpd

How To Uninstall xl2tpd on CentOS 8

To uninstall only the xl2tpd package we can use the following command:

sudo dnf remove xl2tpd

xl2tpd Package Contents on CentOS 8

/etc/ppp/chap-secrets.sample
/etc/ppp/options.xl2tpd
/etc/xl2tpd
/etc/xl2tpd/l2tp-secrets
/etc/xl2tpd/xl2tpd.conf
/run/xl2tpd
/run/xl2tpd/l2tp-control
/usr/bin/pfc
/usr/lib/.build-id
/usr/lib/.build-id/11
/usr/lib/.build-id/11/81b9368c8419f94c98b00fc7964844ea3187af
/usr/lib/.build-id/ab
/usr/lib/.build-id/ab/53b5f53d24a9c7675676f37698c6a1c70ae80e
/usr/lib/.build-id/c0
/usr/lib/.build-id/c0/8ac6caff848d9613444dbc0709868fe55987b2
/usr/lib/systemd/system/xl2tpd.service
/usr/lib/tmpfiles.d/xl2tpd.conf
/usr/sbin/xl2tpd
/usr/sbin/xl2tpd-control
/usr/share/doc/xl2tpd
/usr/share/doc/xl2tpd/BUGS
/usr/share/doc/xl2tpd/CHANGES
/usr/share/doc/xl2tpd/CREDITS
/usr/share/doc/xl2tpd/README.md
/usr/share/doc/xl2tpd/README.patents
/usr/share/doc/xl2tpd/TODO
/usr/share/doc/xl2tpd/chapsecrets.sample
/usr/share/licenses/xl2tpd
/usr/share/licenses/xl2tpd/LICENSE
/usr/share/man/man1/pfc.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man5/l2tp-secrets.5.gz
/usr/share/man/man5/xl2tpd.conf.5.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/xl2tpd-control.8.gz
/usr/share/man/man8/xl2tpd.8.gz

References

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to install xl2tpd on CentOS 8 using yum and dnf.