How do I get Sonic VPN working on Snow Leopard? [SOLVED]

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by sidney » Sat Jul 06, 2013 3:20 pm
The Cisco VPN client does not support Mac OS X versions Snow Leopard and newer. The recommended way to use the Sonic.net VPN is to use the Mac OS X built in support for Cisco VPNs.

However with one of the updates to Snow Leopard, maybe the update to 10.6.4 or 10.6.5 but I can't be sure - It is up to 10.6.8 right now - the built in VPN stopped working with the two Cisco VPNs I was using it for, Sonic's and my university's. I have only casually tried to solve the problem as I have not had much need for the VPN on the two Snow Leopard machines (one 32 bit, one 64 bit) here and it continued to work fine on Lion and linux boxes and a Windows VM I tried it with.

Now, however, I do have a reason to use the VPN from a Snow Leopard machine.

I haven't yet seen a clear explanation of what type of setting in a Cisco VPN server is no longer handled by the Snow Leopard VPN built-in client. It may be that there is some option in the server that Sonic can tweak to re-enable use from Snow Leopard, but I don't know what to ask for.

Does anyone have some knowledge about this that could help, either about a setting that Sonic could change on the server or an alternative VPN client that can run on Snow Leopard?

Thanks

Sidney
by virtualmike » Sun Jul 07, 2013 6:50 pm
Is your Snow Leopard machine one that was upgraded from earlier versions of Mac OS X?

I'm asking because on at least two occasions, when I upgraded my iPad (iOS), the upgrade corrupted my VPN settings (and some other network settings). I cleared all network settings and re-established them, and then VPN to Sonic.net started working again.

If you haven't tried that, you might consider giving it a shot.
by sidney » Sun Jul 07, 2013 9:34 pm
I haven't tried clearing absolutely all network settings. I have tried deleting the VPN network settings and creating new ones. Also, this happened on two different machines that had been running Snow Leopard and the VPN with no problem, then could no longer connect to the Cisco VPN servers after they got on of the Snow Leopard upgrades - such as 10.6.3 to 10.6.4 upgrade. I don't remember exactly which upgrade it was but it was the same for both machines.

I guess I could try a fresh install of Snow Leopard on an external USB disk, upgrade it to 10.6.8, and only then create the VPN network configuration and see what happens. That would at least be a proof whether it is a Snow Leopard problem or something else.
by virtualmike » Sun Jul 07, 2013 9:53 pm
In my situation, the iOS 5.x --> 6.0 upgrade corrupted the settings, as did the 6.0.1 upgrade. Since then, I haven't seen that an upgrade has corrupted the network settings, but I do have to reboot the iPad regularly, or networking seems to get wedged.

PS, Sidney. I'm *that* Mike. :)
by sidney » Tue Jul 09, 2013 5:39 am
Hi *that* Mike!

I just accidentally fixed it! It turns out that the cause was an application I had installed on both of my Snow Leopard machines, called NoobProof. That program provides an easy GUI front end for configuring the Mac OS firewall. What I didn't know until now is that even though I deleted the app and turned off the firewall in System Preferences, it left behind something in system LaunchDaemons that creates some ipfw firewall rules at startup. The MacOS firewall is a front end to ipfw. What I didn't know was that ipfw can be running and have rules configured for it even when System Preferences says that firewall is turned off. The only symptom I have noticed for whatever ipfw rules were left by the incomplete uninstall of NoobProof is that the built-in Cisco VPN could not connect to servers.

Anyway, deleting the entry in LaunchDaemons for "net.waterroof", which is the expert mode sibling program for NoobProof that apprently gets installed with it, and rebooting fixed the VPN problem.
by virtualmike » Tue Jul 09, 2013 10:55 pm
Yowza, Sidney! Good find!

I hate it when cruft remains on a machine after a program is removed. That's why I'm reluctant to "trial" programs under the philosophy of just removing it if I don't like it.

I've even had the opposite occur--upon removal of an unwanted program, the uninstaller removed too much. In one case, it disabled printing services on the machine, until I was able to manually restore enough of the registry that Windows was able to rebuild the rest.
by sidney » Tue Jul 09, 2013 11:08 pm
The funny thing about NoobProof is that was a feature, not a bug. It provides an easy way to configure the firewall, then you can uninstall it and not lose the firewall the configuration that you created. Unfortunately it hooks in to the underlying firewall software of the OS (ipfw) in a slightly different way than the Mac firewall System Preferences control panel hooks into ipfw. Disabling the firewall in System Preferences did not affect the firewall configuration that NoobProof left behind. That's why it took me so long to figure it out, I kept looking at the control panel to verify that the firewall was turned off.
by virtualmike » Tue Jul 09, 2013 11:12 pm
I probably would have done the same! If it's off in the System Preferences (or analogous settings), then I'd assume it really is off.
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