Cisco VPN Client crashing on Ubuntu 8.10 (Interpid Ibex)
From time to time I find it necessary to connect to my University’s VPN network and I have to use the Cisco VPN client in order to do it. Ever since updating my machine from Ubuntu 8.04 to 8.10, running the VPN client causes it to crash in the most horrible way. It locks up completely and various lights such as Caps Lock flash on and off repeatedly. The only way to recover from this is to switch my machine off, reboot it and never run the Cisco VPN under any circumstances.
Well, thanks to a user forum I found recently, I have a solution (sort of). The problem stems from the lack of multi-core support in the Cisco VPN client so one workaround is to turn off multicore support on your machine. I did this via the bios in my Del XPS 1330 laptop and when I rebooted the VPN client worked perfectly. Of course this means that I am only using half of the full potential of my processor but since I don’t use the VPN client all that much I figure that this solution is good enough for now. Once I have finished using VPN I just reboot and turn multicore back on.
I always had problems with CiscoVPN in Linux, not to mention the annoying command-line interface. NetworkManager packaged with ubuntu 8.10 comes with support for CiscoVPN through vpnc, at least the kind of support I need to my University. First I installed vpnc-NetworkManager and also set the option “NAT transversal: Cisco UDP”. This works most of the time except that sometimes the vpnc connection drops (loosing the running ssh connections) for some unknown reason.
I use Cisco’s VPN client on a daily basis in Intrepid running a multi-core 64-bit system. I never have any hassle’s with it. Not really sure how your set up is…..