Cisco vpn and ubuntu 10.10 64 bit - can't get it to work! :(

UPDATE: This is now working thanks to help via Linked In! The solution is contained within this blog entry



So having received a new work laptop, I thought I would take the bold step of trying to remove Microsoft from my desktop and therefore installed ubuntu 10.10 instead of windows. I do however have a windows vm for the tasks I can not move across.

One of the outstanding tasks for me to move to ubuntu is connecting to our work Cisco vpn.

I installed the vpnc plugin into the network manager and then imported our pcf file.

Connecting with this produces "vpn connection failed message", looking in the syslog file I find this section:

Mar 19 19:36:37 hostname NetworkManager[1113]: <info> Starting VPN service 'org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.vpnc'...
Mar 19 19:36:38 hostname NetworkManager[1113]: <info> VPN service 'org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.vpnc' started (org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.vpnc), PID 3232
Mar 19 19:36:38 hostname NetworkManager[1113]: <info> VPN service 'org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.vpnc' appeared, activating connections
Mar 19 19:36:43 hostname NetworkManager[1113]: <info> VPN plugin state changed: 3
Mar 19 19:36:43 hostname NetworkManager[1113]: <info> VPN connection 'Cisco VPN' (Connect) reply received.
Mar 19 19:36:43 hostname kernel: [ 2066.184830] tun0: Disabled Privacy Extensions
Mar 19 19:36:43 hostname NetworkManager[1113]:    SCPlugin-Ifupdown: devices added (path: /sys/devices/virtual/net/tun0, iface: tun0)
Mar 19 19:36:43 hostname NetworkManager[1113]:    SCPlugin-Ifupdown: device added (path: /sys/devices/virtual/net/tun0, iface: tun0): no ifupdown configuration found.
Mar 19 19:36:43 hostname modem-manager: (net/tun0): could not get port's parent device
Mar 19 19:36:44 hostname avahi-daemon[1111]: Withdrawing workstation service for tun0.
Mar 19 19:36:44 hostname NetworkManager[1113]:    SCPlugin-Ifupdown: devices removed (path: /sys/devices/virtual/net/tun0, iface: tun0)
Mar 19 19:36:44 hostname NetworkManager[1113]: <warn> VPN plugin failed: 1
Mar 19 19:36:44 hostname NetworkManager[1113]: <info> VPN plugin state changed: 6
Mar 19 19:36:44 hostname NetworkManager[1113]: <info> VPN plugin state change reason: 0
Mar 19 19:36:44 hostname NetworkManager[1113]: <warn> error disconnecting VPN: Could not process the request because no VPN connection was active.

So as can been seen it all seems to fall apart when it could not get the port's parent device.  I did some googling and found this link which suggests it is a bug in iproute2.

So I have therefore tried the following steps to recompile iproute2:

IPTABLES: Upgrade to latest version:
Download latest tar from www.netfilter.org

tar -xvf iptables-1.4.10.tar

cd iptables-1.4.10

./configure

make

sudo make install

Install additional libraries and programs:

libdb4.8++-dev

bison

libatm1-dev

sudo apt-get install flex

Linked the Ubunutu src directory:

sudo ln -s /usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.35-27-generic /usr/src/linux

Downloaded the latest version of iproute2 from:

http://www.linuxfoundation.org/collaborate/workgroups/networking/iproute2

tar -xvf iproute-2.2.6.38.tar

cd iproute-2.2.6.38

cd lib

edit iproute.c to apply the patch

cd ..

edit the Makefile to have the correct path to db_185.h

export KERNEL_INCLUDE=/usr/src/linux/include

./configure

make

sudo make install

I then rebooted and tried again.  Only to receive the same error in the log.

Anyone got any more ideas as to what is going wrong and what I can do to fix it?

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