Connect to a Cisco VPN on Linux

Check out this: http://www.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/~massar/vpnc/, a more simple alternative to vphclient, see if you can get this working first.

yum install vpnc

Half way there. Next create a conf file at /etc/vpnc/my.conf (note, replace variables [var] with your values):

IPSec gateway [vpn_hostname]IPSec ID [group_name]IPSec secret [group_secret]# your username goes here:
Xauth username [username]# if you want to test rekeying specify nonzero seconds here:
#Rekeying interval 0

If your company supplied you with a Windows install disk, you may need to install it on a Windows box to get the “.pcf” file that contains the vpn_hostname, group_name and group_secret.

If your group_secret is encrypted in your “.pcf” file, decrypt it for use in your my.conf file: http://www.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/~massar/bin/cisco-decode

Run it as root:
/usr/sbin/vpnc my.conf

…it will prompt you for your password, supply it.

And the output should look something like this:

Enter password for [username]@[vpn_hostname]:
Connect Banner:
| You are now connected with thirty minute idle timeout, and twenty-four hour absolute timeout.  All actions are explicitly monitored and logged.

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