NOTE: This is not an official University Document. Accessing the University of Maryland VPN on Linux
Virtual Private Networks are a vital IT productivity tool that allow users to safely and securely access work resources from home or another remote location. They also provide a layer of security when using WiFi networks during travel. The University of Maryland graciously provides a VPN service for use by faculty, staff and students. It also provides client software for users to install on their personal or loaned computers. There are a number of guides available for installing and configuring the Windows and Mac OSX clients for use with the University of Maryland VPN service but a paucity of offerings for configuring a personal computer running Linux to take of the service. Those that are available are out of date. This guide attempts to address the need for a reliable, cross distribution method of accessing the University’s VPN and gathers in one location information that was formerly scattered across a number of web pages. The Cisco VPN client for Linux provided via Terpware is no longer actively developed and only functional on a handful of older Linux distros. A better option is to use vpnc which is available for many different distributions. This how to has been tested on Fedora 19, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4, Debian Squeeze and OpenSUSE 12.3. 1. Install vpnc. This can be accomplished by opening a terminal and typing sudo yum install vpnc on a Fedora or RHEL/CentOS/Scientific Linux system (users of the latter must have the EPEL<http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL> repository enabled) or by issuing the command sudo apt-get install vpnc on a Debian based system (Debian, Ubuntu, Linux Mint). If you do not use sudo on your system, issue the su - command, type in the root password, and issue the commands (but without the 'sudo') vpnc is installed by default on Fedora 19 and OpenSUSE 12.3. 2. Update the configuration files. In the /etc/vpnc/ directory there will be a file either called default.conf or example.conf. It will contain the following lines or something similar: #IPSec gateway my.vpn.gateway #IPSec ID my.ipsec.id #IPSec secret mysecret # your username goes here: #Xauth username Issue the following command, changing the source filename if necessary: sudo cp /etc/vpnc/example.conf /etc/vpnc/umd.conf Then, using the editor of your choice (I prefer vi), change the configuration to the following: IPSec gateway vpn.umd.edu IPSec ID UMD IPSec secret i#|fOd!jisYR5r9N Xauth username your_username_here You can issue one of the following command to begin editing the file: sudo vi /etc/vpnc/umd.conf sudo nano /etc/vpnc/umd.conf sudo gedit /etc/vpnc/umd.conf Replace your_username_here with your University of Maryland Directory ID. Be very careful not to leave any spaces before or after any of the entries. Doing so will cause the connection to fail. 3. Start vpnc. Issue the following command: sudo vpnc umd and enter your University of Maryland Directory password when prompted. Navigate to http://noc.net.umd.edu/cgi-bin/netmgr/whoami to confirm that the VPN connection is up and running. If it is, you will see a web page informing you of your IP address on the University network. 4. Close vpnc. When you are finished with your business on the campus network, issue the following command to close the VPN connection: sudo vpnc-disconnect Luther Clark Jr. IT Support Assistant Office of Academic Computing Services College of Behavioral and Social Sciences University of Maryland
