Using VPN in Ubuntu 7.10

Today I tried to get a VPN connection to my university to work.

So first I tried to make the connection over ubuntu's network manager using the vpn-plugins.
Therefore I installed the plugins described in the ubuntuusers wiki:

• network-manager-pptp

• network-manager-openvpn

• network-manager-vpnc

After I installed and configured everything and loading my universities config file the whole network manager crashed when I tried to connect to the vpn-network. Looking into /var/log/syslog I recognised something:

Jan 27 14:29:36 xxx NetworkManager: file nm-vpn-service.c: line 475 (nm_vpn_service_stage3_connect_cb): assertion failed: (service != NULL)


O.k. googling some time I find out this is a unresolved bug.

So okay then what next??

Next thing I did was trying to install cisco-vpn-client. Trying to compile it failed with a lot of compile errors
/xxx/vpnclient/linuxcniapi.c: In Funktion »CniInjectReceive«:
...
Fehler: »struct sk_buff« hat kein Element namens »nh«


Ok, after searching the internet again I found out that Cisco doesn't update this package with every kernel release.
There are some sites out there which offering patches but I thought to myself that I would not install bugfixes to vpn software out of security reasons from private non-offical sites.

So, okay what then.
Then I found out about vpnc terminal client.
So I installed it via apt and ran it.
After playing around some times I found out that I need to convert my universities pcf file to a fileformat (.conf) which can be read by vpnc.
This can be made with a conversation tool provided by the vpnc packet under:
/usr/share/vpnc/pcf2conf

So after I converted this everything works fine. So forget about other solutions vpnc works perfectly.

have a great time
Oli