I’ve been using Cisco VPN client to access GWireless and Penn State Wireless for quite a long time since I managed to get it work. Two things bother me, the notice in dmesg

and that the Cisco VPN client stops working after a period inactivity. It fails to connect the Virtual Adapter once it disconnects, I have to restart the machine to get it work again.

Here is an alternative application vpnc in the portage. Before we move to the next step, we need enable Device Drivers | Network device support | Universal TUN/TAP device driver support in Linux kernel. David Ramsden hacked a script to convert the Cisco VPN Client’s profile to vpnc configuration file. Copy the converted conf to /etc/vpnc/default.conf and start the vpnc service. Done.

Current /etc/init.d/vpnc does not support profiles, I might hack a patch to cope with this problem later.

The GWU ISS simply ignores the Linux users’ need on GWireless, there is no resource, no support for Linux user. From the screenshot of VPN client on Mac OSX platform, we can conclude that GWireless is secured by Cisco VPN client.

For Gentoo users, just

You might need to fill several forms for Cisco before you login and download vpnclient-linux-x86_64-4.6.03.0190-k9.tar.gz. Or you can get it from here. Copy it to /usr/portage/distfiles, and re-run the previous command.

For other users who are using latest kernel-2.6.14, you need to apply this patch, since 2.6.14 has changed the sk_buffer data structure, then

After that, you need to copy the profile profile from one Windows installation to /etc/opt/cisco-vpnclient/Profiles, and make it worldwide readable.

Update Due to the agreement of the Cisco VPN client, the profile file is removed, thanks to Mackenzie.

Enjoy!