The built-in Cisco VPN client introduced in Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard has the habit of disconnecting itself when re-keying should be performed but fails after about 48 minutes up to one hour. This timeout issue has been fixed in Mac OS X 10.6.4.
On your Mac, choose Apple menu System Preferences, then click Network. Download Cisco VPN Client for Mac to iPsec VPN client (login required). Mac OS X 10.5 PPC, Macintosh, Mac OS X 10.5 Intel, Mac OS X 10.6, Mac OS X 10.4 Intel. Additional Requirements None.
Mac OS X is installed). The Cisco VPN Client application will be installed in the Applications folder of this drive. Click the Install button at the bottom right of this window to initiate the automated remainder of the installation process. NOTE: If you already have an older version of the VPN Client. Open the Cisco AnyConnect VPN Client home page and click on Download Software (registered customers only) on the right hand side of the web page. Choose the required software package and download with valid Cisco user credentials. Cisco AnyConnect VPN Client Troubleshooting TechNote Cisco AnyConnect VPN Client FAQ.
In versions of Mac OS X 10.6.0 up to 10.6.3, the problem can be worked around by increasing the re-keying period to e.g. 1 week.
The update to Snow Leopard 10.6.4 fixes the issue of the VPN disconnecting after 48 minutes many people have observed in 10.6.0–10.6.3. Therefore, there is no need to change the configuration of racoon
anymore.
In order to revert your configuration to the stock one, remove the last line from /etc/racoon.conf
, so that the last line is again
Please let me know in the comments if you still observe disconnections with 10.6.4.
Note that this workaround severely decreases the security of your VPN connection as attackers now have up to 1 week to attack the phase 1 key.
I have no clue where Apple stores the configuration template for racoon
, but I have found the following workaround.
- Create directory “/etc/racoon/remote” as root:
Open a VPN connection to your Cisco VPN concentrator. This should result in the creation of a config file located at
/var/run/racoon/10.1.1.1.conf
, where10.1.1.1
is the IP address of the VPN concentrator.Move this dynamically created file to
/etc/racoon/remote
before we change its contents:
- Now we edit the file, replacing all lines
- To make
racoon
read our converted file, insert a line
- Restart racoon:
Cisco Vpn Mac Os
Cisco Ipsec Vpn Mac Os X
That’s it. If this did not do the trick, try restarting your machine.
Cisco Vpn Mac Client
To summarize, here are all the commands to be executed: