Bug 710545

Creating the directory /var/run/vpnc manually before connecting does NOT solve this problem! Touching /var/run/vpnc/pid manually even produces selinux-errors (since the context for /var/run/vpnc/pid is wrong, of course)...

This problem persists, even though I don't get the error concerning /var/run/vpnc/pid anymore. I'm still not able to establish a vpnc connection via NetworkManager. It works with shell command "vpnc my-vpnc.conf" though.

Still no connection to vpnc via NetworkManager. It works in Ubuntu 11.04, Ubuntu 10.10, Scientific Linux 5.6 and with Fuduntu (which is basically Fedora 14). So why doesn't it work with Fedora 15?

NetworkManager version is: 1:0.8.9997-5.git20110702.fc15
and NetworkManager-vpnc: 1:0.8.999-2.fc15
vpnc: 0.5.3-9.fc15

Still not working in Fedora 16 (x86_64) running Gnome. Still the same behaviour of NetworkManager. I still have to use the command-line "vpnc" to connect. Is this so hard to solve?

Issue persists on Fedora 16, i.e. NetworkManager can't establish a cisco-vpn-connection (without error messages), even though setting up the connection with "vpnc" manually works flawlessly.

NetworkManager.x86_64          1:0.9.2-1.fc16
NetworkManager-vpnc.x86_64     1:0.9.0-1.fc16 
vpnc.x86_64                    0.5.3-13.svn457.fc16

Can you paste the config you're using when running vpnc manually?  Also, you can get a lot more debug output from the NM side if you, as root:

1) killall -TERM nm-vpnc-service
2) /usr/libexec/nm-vpnc-service --debug --persist
3) attempt to connect to the VPN

which will give us more information.  That log *will* contain sensitive information, so feel free to mark the attachment private or analyze it.  I believe it's likely a case of missing configuration on the NM side of things.

My vpnc-config is really short, so no need for an attachment:

IPSec gateway XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX
IPSec ID <any-id>
IPSec secret <any-secret>
Xauth username <any-username>
Xauth password <any-password>

Please note, that the "secret" contains an exclamation mark as well as a dollar sign. All other characters in the config are numbers, hyphens and letters. But I don't think "$" or "!" are possible problems.

Unfortunately, I won't be able to provide you with the output of nm-vpnc-service in the next 20 days, since I'm on holiday and don't have access to a Cicso VPN before April. But I will bookmark this Bug report and answer as soon as possible.

Created attachment 575096 [details]
Output from nm-vpnc-service --debug

Please note, that I double checked that all data in the nm-vpnc-config is the same as in the vpnc-config. I have no idea, why there is "no response from target". With vpnc it _never_ fails.

For what it's worth, it appears to work fine in f17.

Yes, at the moment I think you are right. But it needs some further testing with my university's old cisco vpn. I'm going to make some more tests in the next week and if everything works fine, I will mark this bug WORKSFORME, since I'm not using Fedora 16 anymore.

There should be no difference between F16 and F17 as the latest packages
NetworkManager-0.9.4-6.git20120521.fc16
NetworkManager-0.9.4.0-9.git20120521.fc17
are based on the same code.

Indeed, there is no difference between Fedora 16 and Fedora 17 - it still doesn't work. In the meantime I had the opportunity to test it in the old environment - still the same problem as reported in the first post.

VPNC connection works without any problem for me both using NetworkManager and plain vpnc with latest F17 packages:
vpnc-0.5.3-14.svn457.fc17.x86_64
NetworkManager-0.9.4.0-9.git20120521.fc17.x86_64
NetworkManager-vpnc-0.9.3.997-1.fc17.x86_64
kernel-3.5.2-3.fc17.x86_64

tuxor, if you still experience the issue would you post your package versions and
debug output from running plain vpnc to compare with comment #8's log.

You can enable debug logs by adding the following two lines to your vpnc conf file:
No Detach
Debug 3

Some (hopefully) related links:
http://lists.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/pipermail/vpnc-devel/2011-July/003567.html
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/vpnc/+bug/1021225
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/vpnc/+bug/257451

I won't be able to run tests before October, because I'm not anywhere near the university network where I'm usually reliant on a working vpnc connection. But I promise, I'm going to report back as soon as possible. 

Meanwhile Yann Soubeyrand asked me to forward his latest finding that he already mentioned in the gnome bugzilla (see https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=567122):

"I've tried to run VPNC manually with all the options network-manager-vpnc uses and it works with all the parameters except --local-port 0."

GUI option for Local Port has been added to Advanced dialog in vpnc plugin:
e0fe5b3b12e94fbcbca305b358f962bf6a5cbfa1 (master)

Jiri Klimes' suggestion helped:

"In the meantime, you can add this line
Local Port=500
into [vpn] section of /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/<your_vpn_file>"

It solves the issue for me. I haven't had the opportunity testing the GUI option though. If you want you can mark this bug solved. I will wait for the GUI option before marking it solved myself.

Fedora 16 changed to end-of-life (EOL) status on 2013-02-12. Fedora 16 is 
no longer maintained, which means that it will not receive any further 
security or bug fix updates. As a result we are closing this bug.

If you can reproduce this bug against a currently maintained version of 
Fedora please feel free to reopen this bug against that version.

Thank you for reporting this bug and we are sorry it could not be fixed.