My employer is giving me remote access via a SecurID token and the F5 Network Access Plugin (F5NAP). The latter is in fact a browser plugin, which seems to me an odd way to implement a VPN, but it's the only offered option. Unfortunately,
- the only browsers supported for linux are Firefox 3 and Firefox 8 (per this--scroll to "Linux Operating Systems")
- my primary laptop runs LMDE with Firefox 12 (from the LMDE repos) and Iceweasel 13 (from mozilla.debian.net), which I want to keep: the uplevel browsers seem much more performant.
So I first tried to install the F5NAP on my iceweasel, hoping it was sufficiently like the versions above. I browsed to my employer's site, logged in using the token, and followed the link to install the plugin. Unfortunately, that failed: the xpi began running, but then quit with the message
- Code: Select all
F5 Network Access Plugin could not be installed because it is not compatible with Iceweasel 13.0.1
Hoping for a simple workaround, I told the often-useful User Agent Switcher to emulate Firefox 8, but no fix. Hence it seems like I will hafta
- install Firefox 3 or Firefox 8
- run that downlevel browser whenever I want remote access
As stated above, that will entail running 2 browsers:
- downlevel, running one tab for F5NAP
- uplevel, running everything else (I tend to have tens of tabs open at any given time)
So I'm wondering
- Which of the supported downlevel browsers (Firefox 3 or Firefox 8) has the smaller memory footprint?
- How to install the downlevel browser so that it does not interfere with my uplevel browser's configuration, operation, and updating?
- How to run the downlevel browser so that it does not interfere with my uplevel browser?
