Bad Cisco VPN client
Proprietary software always sucks. This time its the Cisco VPN client. It refuses to compile on FC-4 with all updates applied (I even tried on the newer acpi-is-busted kernel). It probably won’t work on rawhide, but that’s not what my laptop has. Monash’s VPN doesn’t work with vpnc from Extras either, so no NetworkManager-vpnc goodness for me.
Then I try the OS X version. And lo and behold, I read that it destroys /opt where DarwinPorts tends to live. In fact, thats not the only damage that it does: it symlinks var to private/var and tmp to private/tmp. Don’t even think of moving var, as err, you’ll slowly realise your sudo options don’t work. Apple+S into single user mode, then mount -uw /, to recreate the var symlink. Bad cisco, bad 4.7.00.0510 release.
Anyone think the following is hazardous?
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 11 Sep 26 21:28 /tmp@ -> private/tmp lrwxr-xr-x 1 root admin 11 Sep 28 01:29 /var@ -> private/var
And should I be changing it (in single user mode, none the less)?
I have cisco-vpnclient-0:4.6.03.0190-0.duke.1.fc4.i386 that is known to work (as long as your connection is stable, otherwise it’s woefully unreliable). If you ask very nicely, I’ll let you have the .nosrc.rpm. :)
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FWIW, /tmp and /var have always been symlinks to /private/tmp and /private/var in OSX and I think the boot process recreates them if absent (though I can’t remember where).
-n
pptpclient works for me well. It is currently available on Debian/Ubuntu, though it would be good to have proper pptp-style VPN support in Network Manager.
Does Cisco VPN client use pptp?
no idea simos. And thanks for that Nathan… at least I know the cisco client didn’t totally bork everything.
I’ve given up even trying too much to get on the vpn. It annoys me to no end, and even dies quite often on OS X.
FWIW, /tmp and /var have always been symlinks to /private/tmp and /private/var in OSX and I think the boot process recreates them if absent (though I can't remember where).
-n