Cisco vpn client not working

VPN
1

Hi there,Me again. Sorry for spamming that much for help today …I just installed cisco vpn client from my university:This is all that happens and then it says “stopped working” (or it doesn’t say and close)any hints what I might’ve done wrong?( I installed it from Konsole using bash)sudo bash anyconnect-*.sh

Trying to install openconnect via Yast just does nothing. Install starts and yast closes without any hint about what’s going on …

537×666 103 KB

For everyone coming here from Google-Land or elsewhere: That guy u/Special-Factor2274 gave me the answer
https://www.reddit.com/r/openSUSE/comments/112tr3d/comment/j8mxe3t/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

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2

I had the same troubles. openconnect stopped working in December last year. I get a 404 error when trying to connect to the VPN. Since my university does not support openconnect, I don’t know if the error is server or client related. So you have to use the proprietary Cisco anyconnect client.

In openSUSE TW the client does not work out of the box, as you can see in your screenshot. The following steps are necessary to make the client work:

  1. Install Cisco AnyConnect with bash script
  2. Change following line in /opt/cisco/anyconnect/AnyConnectLocalPolicy.xml
    true
  3. edit /etc/systemd/system/vpnagent.service
    change EnvironmentFile=/etc/environment
    to EnvironmentFile=-/etc/environment
    The minus sign ignores the file if it does not exist (it doesn’t on openSUSE TW).
  4. reboot and check in YaST → Services if vpnagentd service is running
  5. Connect to your VPN :slight_smile:
  6. Update client manually
3

Check journalctl for any error.
Or you can use openconnect.

4

I assume that you run tumbleweed. With the latest tumbleweed snapshot 20230213 openconnect was already installed for me. I might be wrong but check if it is already installed for you.

5

That’s some working witchcraft here

6

I know this post is kind of old but this solution still works perfectly on tumbleweed. I just started using linux/opensuse and would like to know how you come up with such workarounds because the only thing I am able to do is ask google. In the future I want to be able to come up with such fixes myself.

7

tried running openconnect as well, nothing’s happening when I try to install it.
Pastebin with journalctl output:

https://pastebin.com/ZUW2cU95

8

I now switched to my private computer for now, since I have to get work done now …
(there I am running Kubuntu, without any troubles such as non-working programs :-D)

I’ll check back tonight. I’ll from time to time read here so, if anybody wants to dive in the journalctl … problem is: neither the return codes nor their descriptions are of help to me …

9

Glad I could help. The second step with the BypassDownloader is no longer necessary with the newer versions of the client. I don’t know if it was a bug back then. If you have changed the line, you can also set it to false again.

With every connection, the client first checks if there is an update and then tries to download it. If you set BypassDownloader to true, this step is skipped. This caused problems back then. Hence my point 6 with the manual update.

Step 3 is the systemd service that failed to start after booting. The reason for this is actually trivial. It is only because the start script is looking for a file that does not exist and is not needed. In Ubuntu and Fedora, the file /etc/environment does exist, but it is empty.

To find the solution, I had to do a lot of research and trial and error. Since the client worked out of the box in Ubuntu and Fedora, I used these distributions in a VM as a comparison.

Cisco installs its binary blobs in /opt/cisco/secureclient/bin/
Here you can run the various modules via the terminal. For example:
./vpnui → starts the GUI
./vpn → starts vpn connection in terminal

In the terminal, you will usually get more error messages if something goes wrong.
Or, in YaST → Services, you can see a log file from a service that could not be started. This gave me the hint about the missing environment file.

10

journalctl -u vpnagentd.service

Also check service status:

systemctl status vpnagentd.service

11

It doesn’t seem like a problem in the program itself, but problems with configuration. Are you certain that all your variables (particularly the address of the gateway) are correct?

12 
kevin@kevin-ThinkPad-L14-Gen-3:~> journalctl -u vpnagentd.service -q
kevin@kevin-ThinkPad-L14-Gen-3:~> journalctl -u vpnagentd.service Hint: You are currently not seeing messages from other users and the system. Users in the 'systemd-journal' group can see all messages. Pass -q to turn off this notice. -- No entries -- kevin@kevin-ThinkPad-L14-Gen-3:~> systemctl status vpnagentd.service × vpnagentd.service - Cisco Secure Client - AnyConnect VPN Agent Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/vpnagentd.service; enabled; preset: disabled) Active: failed (Result: resources) since Wed 2023-02-15 11:18:15 CET; 47s ago CPU: 0
Warning: some journal files were not opened due to insufficient permissions.

so, progress at least.Although I have no ideas how to deal with any of this and the permissions are confusing to me … there is one user with root: me.

better readable: https://pastebin.com/jsky7PHY

13

Hey, I edited a working solution into my post.

14

Try to use sudo…
sudo systemctl status vpnagentd.service

15

https://pastebin.com/1PqSZtUV

16

It seems that you need to look for errors in the log. As far as I remember, the lack of a gui indicates that a package or several are missing, but I don’t remember which ones.

17

I figured sth similar.
It’s quite daunting, however, since I just downloaded the .sh file, as usual and hoped that it would work again :smiley:
any idea which logs might be of most interest?

18

This one:

journalctl -u vpnagentd.service

19

https://pastebin.com/HirsxW5r last entry after trying, again … I wish it would say what exactly is missing :smiley: