Setting up UF VPN on Ubuntu

Setting up UF VPN on Ubuntu

Written by P. Oscar Boykin and Brett Presnell.

Connecting to UF's VPN (virtual private network) from home (or elsewhere) makes it appear that your IP address is a UF IP, and hence gives you access to library journals and so forth that are licensed by UF (it also encrypts the connection between your computer and campus). This can also be done by using the library's proxy (for that go the UF Library web page and click on Off-Campus Access), but the VPN approach is more seamless.

In the past, connecting via vpn required downloading and installing Cisco's VPN client, which was pretty tricky on linux and, since it ran as a kernel module, the install had to be redone every time your kernel was upgraded. This was a big hassle. Finally though, the native linux VPN client, vpnc, can be easily configured in Ubuntu to connect to UF's VPN and it seems to work very well. I've attached the instructions below.

One minor warning: if you start or end a vpn session while you have an email client running, you will lose your connection to the IMAP server. Similarly any open ssh or other such connections will be dropped. Just to be on the safe side, shut down your email before your start or stop VPN (it's perfectly ok to read your email during a VPN session, and it would be perfectly reasonable to just run VPN all the time so that you always have transparent access).

To connect to the UF VPN with Ubuntu, try the following:

1. install the packages vpnc and network-manager-vpnc using either
   using the synaptic package manager or one of the command line tools
   (apt-get or aptitude), e.g.,

      sudo apt-get install vpnc network-manager-vpnc

   This should also restart network-manager, so be prepared to
   momentarily lose your network connection (I would quit email before
   doing this).

2. Click on the network icon in your "system tray" area (the thing
   that looks like two computer monitors or like the bars on a cell
   phone if you're on wireless).  You should now see an entry for "VPN
   Connections".  Go into that menu and click "configure VPN".

3. This should open the "VPN Connections" window.  Click "Add".

4. I recommend using "UF VPN" as the Connection Name.  For the gateway
   use vpn.ufl.edu; for the group name use vpn-auth.

5. On the optional tab click "Override user name" and add your UF
   gatorlink email address (e.g., yourgatorlinkusername@ufl.edu) and
   click forward and then apply.

6. You will need the UF VPN group password, which is contained in
   encrypted form in the VPN configuration file that you can download
   from:

      http://net-services.ufl.edu/cgi-bin/vpn/vpn-clients.cgi 

   (Once you are logged in, scroll to the bottom of the page to
   download the configuration file).  The group password is given by
   the enc_GroupPwd field in the pcf file that you download.  The
   following web page will decrypt the password for use with vpnc:

      http://www.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/~massar/bin/cisco-decode

7. Now you can connect to the vpn by clicking the network icon, going
   to VPN connections and clicking "UF VPN".  It will ask you for your
   password (your gatorlink password) and the group password.

8. I went ahead and clicked the button that adds the group password to
   my keyring so that I don't have to remember it in the future.  (I
   suppose that the group password might change from time to time
   though, so one might have to retrieve and enter a new one at some
   point.)