An alternative to the Cisco VPN software (described below) is VPNC, which is open source and claimed to be even faster. They are now available for most distributions, it worked fine on Ubuntu for me, and FC4 also has it in their standard packages. For FC3 this report came in from Nicholas Chapman:
I got vpnc to work. It required some divergence from the directions you have linked on your webpage: 1) google for a vpnc rpm ( I couldn't find it with yum install on fc3). 2) after install, figure out where it put vpnc stuff by doing a find on / ** or use "rpm -qpl the-file.rpm" or "rpm -ql the-package" 3) move vpnc-script to proper location as demanded by sbin/vpnc 4) edit vpnc-script to put in absolute path for ifconfig and route commands (both were in sbin). 5) make a profile using the one in your vpnc directions. 6) move vpnc-disconnect command to sbin I have to run it as root, but it does work!
The starting link on the OIT website was: here, but until their information is up-to-date, look below for a working solution.
------------------------------------------ Status: this is now working for me on FC4. Version 28-jan-2006 (Peter Teuben, teuben@astro.umd.edu) 1) the tar file on OIT's webpage was vpnclient-linux-4.0.4.B-k9.tar.gz which in the end didn't work for me (kernel too new). I'm using FC4, which is running a 2.6.14 these days, for me. After some creative googling i found version 4.7 of the vpnclient software for linux. Make sure your linux has enough of a kernel source to be able to compile modules. For Fedora Core 4, this means the "kernel" rpm is not enough, you also need the "kernel-devel" rpm, which adds another 40 MB or so to your disk.... Or do this: yum install kernel-devel For a debian based distribution like Ubuntu you need to install the kernel-source package. Do this: pkg-install..... (sorry, gotta look up the incantation here) 2) install it: (as root) tar zxf ... cd vpnclient ./vpn_install (i could use all default answers) (but i had to comment out two lines of code in linuxcniapi.c do_gettimeofday(&skb->stamp); since my kernel didn't know about stamp....) 3) get the rootcert.txt from that OIT webpage. You'll need to be certified using your UMD ID to do this. Put this file in /etc/CiscoSystemsVPNClient/Certificates/ 4) I needed to put two files UMD.pcf and UMD-Wireless.pcf into /etc/CiscoSystemsVPNClient/Profiles/ I was lazy and used the ones from my Mac that i had used to store my username and password in!!! You can probably start from scratch by using the sample.pcf file in the source code and edit the following fields in the two profiles Description=Connection to UMD VPN Host=vpn.umd.edu GroupName=UMD Description=Connection for Wireless and Mobile Computers Host=vpn.umd.edu GroupName=UMD-Wireless hopefully the vpnclient command will ask for a username/password, but on the mac it was nice to store the encrypted version in the file, so on linux i now have automatic authentication! 5) start the service: (for now, normally it can be done at re/boot) /etc/rc.d/init.d/vpnclient_init start and pay attention there are no error messages. You can safely always start this service (it's just a module loaded in the kernel). TUrning VPN on and off is the next step. 6) Even if you are already connected, e.g. at home using cable modem or so, you can simple start a VPN connection (it will overload your normal connection) by doing: vpnclient connect UMD-Wireless or any profile you may have stored. It hit ^C to abort it to fall back to the default connection. Warning: If you are running your machine in a local LAN, the VPN connection will take over your machine, you will not be able to connect to the LAN anymore.
NetworkManager-vpnc-0.6.4-3.fc7 vpnc-0.4.0-2.fc7 openvpn-2.1-0.19.rc4.fc7 NetworkManager-openvpn-0.3.2-7.fc6The NetworkManager Applet (useful to manage your network connections) has a VPN Connections menu option....
OpenVPN name the connection gateway X.509 vs. .... or VPNC