Fedora 12 Cisco VPN issue

[hnarwan]

Hi All,

I've just installed Fedora 12 but having issues connecting my VPN.

I need this to access my corporate network and then remote desktop into my XP machine at work.

We're using Cisco VPN at work, I took my .pcf file and imported that into System>Preferences>Network Connections>VPN tab. That looks to have created a good VPN connection, all my credentials are in there now but I dont know how to start the thing.

In the 'Last Used' column it says 'never', i have 'connect automatically' checked, have logged out and back in again hoping it would connect but the status never changes.

Any ideas?

thanks
Hardeep

[Mortosa]

well when I need to get connected to work via VPN I do the following.

1. Left click in the network icon on the panel and then go to "VPN Connections"
2. I then select my VPN connection and it asks me for my password.
3. Done

[hnarwan]

Thanks Mortoso, that's done it for me. I actually had the notification removed from my panel but i've added it back now.

The next problem I have is when i'm connected on my vpn i cant connect to my xp computer at work using Applications>Internet>Remote Desktop Viewer.

When VPN is connected I also cant connect to the internet on my Fedora machine. Is this something you've come across?

[Mortosa]

Glad to hear you got connected.

I dont use remote desktop viewer. The programs I have used in the past are Gnome-RDP and also Remmina.

As for connecting to the internet you will find that most companies turn off the ability to split the connection so that you cant browse the internet. That way it decreases the chances of security issues.

I do mostly linux server administration but I do have a few windows servers. I also have to have a windows machine since there are a few programs I am forced to use that are windows only. You will find that if want want to get connected to a server or a workstation you have to use more then the name. you will have to use the full domain name. an example would be trying to connect to your workstation called "MYXP" you type in "myxp" and it errors. but if you type in "myxp.yourdomain.com" it will connect.

If you want to make sure its not an error on your end you can always try to connect to your workstations IP address. This is what I do most of the time.

Hope this helps

[hnarwan]

Thanks again Mortosa.

I'm sure I had the issue of not being able to connect to the internet when connected to VPN on Windows but that's something I either fixed a long time ago with a config setting or it dissapeared itself. When using an XP machine from home, if I connect via Cisco VPN i'm still able to browse the web from my home computer. Not sure why that's not an option with this Fedora machine i'm using right now.

In terms of using remote desktop i'm unsure why the Remote Desktop Viewer application is having problems. I can ping my machine (using either ip address or FQDN) from this Fedora box but when trying to remote in i get an error.

Connection to host <ip address> was closed.

I'll take a look at the other programs you mention to see if I can get anywhere with those.

I'm only really going to be using this Fedora laptop for email/rss, internet browsing, office stuff and running a virtual machine so I can play around with Oracle 11g (probably on Redhat), still it would have been nice to remote into my work machine if I ever needed to without going back to my XP machine.

A part of me hopes i havent switched to Fedora just to be different, as XP was generally allowing me to do everything I needed to with minimum fuss.

That's probably exactly the kind of talk that gets you into trouble on these forums but I thought i'd share.

thanks again for your help so far.

Hardeep