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Installing Cisco AnyConnect on 64-Bit Ubuntu 11.10

Every six months for the past few years I've been posting how to install Cisco AnyConnect on the latest 64-bit releases of Ubuntu and for a couple of cycles Linux Mint since I was using that as my primary OS for a while.


This time around it's finally downright boring, which is a good thing. No more installing 32-bit libraries, creating symlinks to Firefox libraries, etc. etc. you just do the following:



  1. Hit your company's VPN server in a browser and log in with your user name and passcode

  2. Click the AnyConnect link on the left

  3. Click "Start AnyConnect"

  4. This will attempt to install AnyConnect via your browser's Java plugin. If this works, you're done! If this doesn't work (give it at least 60 seconds), read on.


In my case on the two machines on which I attempted this it didn't work. The browser-based install just hung even though I verified I have Java installed and the browser plugin is working.


If you don't have Java installed, however, the browser-based installation will detect that and give you a download link for the installer. So what I did was in Firefox I went to Edit -> Preferences -> Manage Add-Ons -> Plugins and I disabled the IcedTea-Web Plugin, which is the Java plugin that Firefox ships with.


I then restarted Firefox and repeated the steps above, only this time on step 4 it detected I didn't have Java installed and provided a link to the 64-bit installer. Download that file (vpnsetup.sh), chmod +x it, run it, and you're done.


I'm a little disappointed I didn't have to the usual dance on this, but it finally just works.

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Comments

Spencer Bragg said…
Ive followed your older post to get Cisco AnyConnect to work on 11.04, so naturally when I upgraded to 11.10 I came here looking for answers. When I run vpnsetup.sh I am getting an error that I do not know how to resolve. Installing Cisco AnyConnect VPN Client ...Removing previous installation...vpnagentd: no process foundExtracting installation files to /tmp/vpn.EqWZh8/vpninst266954743.tgz...Unarchiving installation files to /tmp/vpn.EqWZh8...Starting the VPN agent.../opt/cisco/vpn/bin/vpnagentd: error while loading shared libraries: libxml2.so.2: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64I also noticed that when I go looking for the AnyConnect program I can find the icon but when you click on the program to run it nothing happens. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
October 22, 2011 at 10:58 AM
kaerax said…
Hi Spencer,I don't know if you found a way around this yet, but I had the same error as you. I had to install the 32bit dependencies. The solution for your ELFCLASS64 issue is there http://developerslog.org/?p=51
January 6, 2012 at 8:53 PM
Mostafa Zoubi said…
you can use VPNC app inested of Cisco VPN Client. to do so:

[root@mostafa-redhat ~]# yum install vpnc (Redhat)
[root@mostafa-ubuntu-vm~]# apt-get install vpnc (Ubuntu)

once installed, type vpnc on your terminal:

[root@mostafa-redhat ~]# vpnc
Enter IPSec gateway address: yourhost.org.jo
Enter IPSec ID for 80.90.171.66: Group-Name (ask your system administrator to give you this ID)
Enter IPSec secret for Group-Name@yourhost.org.jo: (ask your system administrator to give you this passphrase)
Enter username for yourhost.org.jo: mostafa.zoubi
Enter password for mostafa.zoubi@yourhost.org.jo: XXXXXXX
VPNC started in background (pid: 11791)...

to disconnect type vpnc-disconnect on your terminal:

[root@mostafa-redhat ~]# vpnc-disconnect
Terminating vpnc daemon (pid: 11791)
September 20, 2012 at 2:23 PM
Anonymous said…
Thanks -- I've used both VPNC and and more recently OpenConnect (http://www.infradead.org/openconnect/). Always had great luck with both and have since given up on AnyConnect since it's still pretty flaky.
September 20, 2012 at 2:29 PM
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