Cisco VPN

The Cisco AnyConnect VPN client for Linux works fine in NoTouch and some OS images have it included.

In this guide we assume you have a NoTouch machine with a configured connection, be it Citrix, VMware Horizon View, whatever, and you want to add Cisco VPN support in a way that your users can click on an icon to start the VPN connection when they need it.

1. Open a Shell prompt
2. Configure the Cisco VPN service
   • Create the folder where the file will reside:
     • mkdir /config/ciscovpn
   • Create/edit your ProfileName.pcf connection file
     • See here: Install Cisco VPN on Linux
   • Save the file to /config/ciscovpn
3. In the configuration, or via NoTouch Center, create a connection named "Start VPN" and with connection mode "Custom command".
   • Set the parameter "Command to be executed" to:
     • vpnclient connect ProfileName
     • (Please note that ProfileName is supposed to come without the .pcf extension!)
4. Enable Cisco VPN service (under Services)
5. Reboot the machine and check the workflow

You can of course use Connection autostart for the CiscoVPN connection to automatically connect to the VPN. We found however that most end-users like to have some control as they want to decide if they need it or not (think of a worker who sometimes works in the office without VPN and sometimes from home with VPN).

Should you require different connections for in-house and "on-the-road" scenarios, you can of course create more connections, such as "Citrix office" vs. "Citrix outside" or similar.

Notes:

• The CiscoVPN client service needs to be restarted before you can reconnect. You might expect that the vpnclient does this for, but that is not the case. You need to explicitly call the following command, e.g. from the session exit-action:

   /etc/init.d/vpnclient_init restart