The first that you will want to do is to get the Cisco VPN client software from your IT department. I tried to get this directly from Cisco’s website, only to find after going through their completely too long registration process, that the software wasn’t made available to me because I wasn’t a special registration type (I’m figuring you have to register with some sort of Cisco specific ID or something particular to the products that you have purchased from Cisco). At any rate, I got mine from my IT department.

Once you have it, download it to your /home/user directory. Replace user with the user that you are currently logged into as.

Most likely this is in a .tar.gz format, so you’ll need to run the following from a Terminal:

tar zxvf vpnclient-linux-x86_64-4.8.01.0640-k9.tar.gz

this will unzip the file into /home/user/vpnclient directory.

Next you’ll need to know that you have the linux header file for the current version that you are running. You’ll want to run the following to show the current version:

uname -r

When I ran this on my system, I got:

2.6.24-18-generic

To make sure that you have the right version, you’ll want to run the following:

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.24-18-generic

For me, my update manager has downloaded this before, so I didn’t have anything to download. After this is run, you’ll want to make sure you are in the /home/user/vpnclient directory and run the following:

sudo make

This will make the installer for the vpnclient. Because you need to run a patch, make sure you’ve run:

sudo apt-get install patch

Now to the fun stuff, download the patch from here and save it to your /home/user/vpnclient directory. Run the following from the vpnclient directory:

patch < ./vpnclient-linux-2.6.24-final.diff

and you should see the following:

patching file GenDefs.h
patching file interceptor.c

Once that is done, run the following:

sudo ./vpn_install

You should see the following questions asked:

Directory where binaries will be installed [/usr/local/bin]

Automatically start the VPN service at boot time [yes]

In order to build the VPN kernel module, you must have the
kernel headers for the version of the kernel you are running.

Directory containing linux kernel source code [/lib/modules/2.6.24-18-generic/build]

* Binaries will be installed in “/usr/local/bin”.
* Modules will be installed in “/lib/modules/2.6.24-18-generic/CiscoVPN”.
* The VPN service will be started AUTOMATICALLY at boot time.
* Kernel source from “/lib/modules/2.6.24-18-generic/build” will be used to build the module.

Is the above correct [y]

Answer yes to all of them. All things considering you should see that the install process goes through. The last things that you should see when the installer finishes up is:

Setting permissions.
/opt/cisco-vpnclient/bin/cvpnd (setuid root)
/opt/cisco-vpnclient (group bin readable)
/etc/opt/cisco-vpnclient (group bin readable)
/etc/opt/cisco-vpnclient/Profiles (group bin readable)
/etc/opt/cisco-vpnclient/Certificates (group bin readable)
* You may wish to change these permissions to restrict access to root.
* You must run “/etc/init.d/vpnclient_init start” before using the client.
* This script will be run AUTOMATICALLY every time you reboot your computer.

Then you’ll just need to move your *.pcf files into the profiles directory and away you go! This can be done by a simple:

cp *.pcf /etc/opt/cisco-vpnclient/Profiles

Then you’ll want to start the software, you can do this by running the command:

sudo /etc/init.d/vpnclient_init start

Within your profile names, make sure that you don’t have any spaces in them. To start the software, you’ll want to run:

sudo vpnclient connect NameOfConnection

You’ll replace NameOfConnection with the name of the connection file without the .pcf extension.