Vpnc w/ Hybrid on Ubuntu Karmic Koala

A while ago, I gave up on Cisco’s VPN for linux. Well, it appears my company did anyway. Nothing was ever available to work on a current kernel, and finding patches is hard. Especially with my system not being 64-bit capable.

Then I had someone tell me that they got it to work with the NetworkManager Applet. I installed all the packages that they gave me, but it did not work. With the packages installed already, I looked at my default.conf and entered what was needed.

IPSec ID xxxxxxxx
IPSec gateway xxxxxxxx
IPSec secret xxxxxxxx
IKE Authmode hybrid
Application version Cisco Systems VPN Client 4.8.00 (0490) Linux
CA-File /etc/vpnc/xxxxxxxx
Script /etc/vpnc/vpnc-script
Xauth username xxxxxxxx

After setting up the configuration files, I noticed I would get this error:

vpnc was built without openssl: Can’t do hybrid or cert mode.

So I had to compile it with openssl myself.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get build-dep vpnc
sudo apt-get install libssl-dev
mkdir ~/src/vpnc -p
cd ~/src/vpnc
apt-get source vpnc
cd vpnc-*
sudo gedit Makefile

These two lines need to be uncommented in the makefile

OPENSSL_GPL_VIOLATION = DOPENSSL_GPL_VIOLATION
OPENSSLLIBS = -lcrypto

dpkg-buildpackage
sudo dpkg -i ../vpnc*.deb

Now I was getting somewhere, sort of. Any attempt to connect would yield this while telling me that I was connected:

resolvconf: Error: /etc/resolv.conf must be a symlink

I found a lot of faulty info on how to fix this. If I created my own symlink it would get overwritten. Here is how I have resolved it.

sudo NetworkManager stop
sudo aptitude remove resolvconf
sudo aptitude purge resolvconf
sudo aptitude install resolvconf
sudo NetworkManager start

I was able to connect without any errors.

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Posted on 22 January '10 by Eric B, under Computers & Gadgets.

2 Comments to “Vpnc w/ Hybrid on Ubuntu Karmic Koala”

#1 Posted by Josh (27.01.10 at 11:15 )

You’re first line of the fix is a typo…

from:
sudo stop
to:
sudo NetworkManager stop

#2 Posted by Eric B (03.02.10 at 16:10 )

You are correct. Thank you for pointing that out.

Unfortunately, the issue has returned after a few reboots and/or a few system updates. Still looking for a more permanent resolution.