VPN not working

[dafydd]

"This is why Linux is rubbish". That's what my girlfriend said when for some reason we couldn't set up a VPN properly to access reading that she needs to do as part of her postgrad she's just started at the University of Amsterdam. Needless to say, I am mightily irked as I know that Linux is not rubbish. But it gets more difficult to tell her that when she's already fuming about the fact that it must be Linux's fault she can't open a winmail.dat that her tutor has emailed to her rather than MS Outlook's fault...

We're both using Linux Mint 11 (I was using LMDE a while back but it was too rough round the edges for me...), hers is 32bit and mine 64bit. I've tried to follow the instructions here to get the VPN working, and although the computer can seemingly connect to the VPN we're still getting access denied when trying to get material that is supposedly available to anyone using the university's network.

The university does not support Linux (or even Mac!) so I'm hoping I can get some help here. You'll see that the link to how to get access to the VPN under Ubuntu 404s, but I assume it's just supposed to go to the first link in my post anyway as Google doesn't show many other possibilities.

I've tried using the Cisco VPN client for Windows in an XP guest on VirtualBox and it works and I can get access to the articles I need, but it would be so much easier for my girlfriend to be able to do it herself under a working, native VPN.

Any help is appreciated. Please ask for any further information needed. I'm not too advanced (I had to ditch LMDE for example) but can follow instructions fairly well

Thanks in advance!

[richyrich]

Have you tried vpnc, the Cisco compatible vpn client that is available in the Package Manager ?

vpnc is a VPN client compatible with cisco3000 VPN Concentrator (also
known as Cisco's EasyVPN equipment). vpnc runs entirely in userspace
and does not require kernel modules except of the tun driver to
communicate with the network layer.

It supports most of the features needed to establish connection to the
VPN concentrator: MD5 and SHA1 hashes, 3DES and AES ciphers, PFS and
various IKE DH group settings.

or openconnect ?

OpenConnect is an open client for the Cisco AnyConnect VPN.

[dafydd]

VPNC is the method described in the first link in my post. The computer apparently successfully connects to the VPN but when I try to access material available to the VPN such as this article for example I get told that "Sorry, you do not have access to this article".

Using OpenConnect I don't really know what I'm doing. Having created a new VPN connection in the network manager, I see the following in the log when I try to connect:

Attempting to connect to 145.18.40.71:443
Failed to connect to host vpn.uva.nl
Failed to open HTTPS connection to vpn.uva.nl

[sammygreen]

Follow the link for VPN troubleshooting:

http://help.expedient.com/vpn/vpntrouble.shtml

[ghl]

Hi, sorry no answers but hitting similar trouble.

I have installed vpnc and the network manager. I'm trying to connect to a Draytek Vigor router with VPN enabled in it. I can set up the link on my PC (LMDE 201109 64bit made up to date) however whenever I try to connect, the icon disappears off the panel and I have to reboot - same problem as you, if I open it again manually there are no network connections listed - but I can still access the internet, email, etc.
Once rebooted, all is listed again fine.

One of my colleagues has set his up on native Ubuntu 11.10 and all is fine with that, so looks like a setting somewhere or possibly a version problem.

Any pointers greatly received!!

[ghl]

ok, found why when I click on connect the icon disappears off the panel - in my case this was because I have the 'Available to all users' ticked in the settings - unticking this made it try to connect. It's still failing at that point but now just with Connection failed instead of crashing.

Set up a ubuntu 10.04 LTS 32bit version on virtualbox and that connects with the same settings in the gui.

So moving forwards but is now either package version errors or a hidden setting somewhere in LMDE. Hope that helps you our as well.

[fkooman]

VPN settings -> IPv4 settings -> Routes... -> *uncheck* "Use this connection only for resources on its network"

If you don't do this your traffic towards Google Scholar and the publishers won't go through the UvA tunnel.