Article
0 comment

How to use a Cisco VPN configuration with open source vpnc

Sometimes you get to use Cisco VPN Gateway. And sometimes you don’t have an original Cisco VPN client or it just doesn’t work. This is the case with MacOS Lion 10.7. But wait, there’s rescue!

You could use the open source VPN client vpnc. In my case I used a homebrew port, which could be installed via:

brew install vpnc

To use the binary installed in /usr/local/sbin you need to add /usr/local/sbin to your path. Next you need to convert the original Cisco pcf file into a vpnc conf file with the also installed pcf2vpnc tool:

pcf2vpnc original.pcf newfile.conf

Copy that newfile.conf to /usr/local/etc/vpnc and start up your vpn connection via:

sudo vpnc newfile

You need to enter whatever password (possibly containing a RSA SecurID token) and you should be connected.

Connection could be terminated with:

sudo vpnc-disconnec