FC4 Mouse weirdness with Cisco VPN [Solved]

Mike Noble mgnoble at gmail.com
Sun Jul 17 18:21:08 UTC 2005


Andrew Mather wrote:
> Hi Rahul
> 
> On 7/15/05, Andrew Mather <mathera at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>>Hi Rahul
>>
>>On 7/15/05, Rahul Sundaram <sundaram at redhat.com> wrote:
>>
>>>Andrew Mather wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>Hi All,
>>>>
>>>>I have a machine running FC4 with the latest updates (as of yesterday
>>>>morning), although this problem has been happening ever since the
>>>>machine was installed (clean install after full format incl /home).
>>>>I am using KDE as my window manager.
>>>>
>>>>The machine behaves quite normally and I can use the internet, local
>>>>applications, terminal windows etc, just as you might expect for as
>>>>long as I like with no problem.
>>>>
>>>>However whenever I bring up my VPN to work, which uses the Cicso VPN
>>>>client, it kills the mouse within a few seconds.  The cursor moves
>>>>over to the left hand side of the screen and won't come out.  Killing
>>>>the VPN does not restore function, I have to restart X
>>>>
>>>>The VPN concentrator enforces a policy which cuts off local LAN access
>>>>while the VPN is up.  This is annoying, but done for the "right
>>>>reasons".
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>Is this Cisco client the proprietary one or vpnc from Fedora Extras?.
>>>Can you try vpnc to see if this works better?
>>
>>It's the Cisco one.  I wondered if the fact that the concentrator is
>>enforcing policies like disabling local LAN access means it won't want
>>to talk to any other type of client.
>>
>>Our ITS guys are not very Linux friendly (well..antagonistic is
>>probably a better description), so I won't get any support from them.
>>
>>But it's definitely worth a shot.  I'll give it a go over the weekend sometime.
> 
> 
> Well, I installed vpnc and as I suspected, my work's ITS have set up
> the concentrator in such a way that it will only talk to proprietary
> Cisco clients, so vpnc was no help.
> 
> So I reinstalled FC4 (full format and clean install).  3 times.  Glad
> I had the DVD...no feeding cd's ! ;-)
> 
> Same behaviour each time.  100% reproducible.  Tried both Gnome and
> KDE as default WM.  No difference.  Tried both proprietary and generic
> Nvidia drivers.   No difference, so I'm pretty sure it wasn't
> something in the WM or video driver area.
> 
> On further testing, the problem seemed to be related to moving and
> resizing windows, or loading graphically busy web pages, like the
> Ganglia cluster monitoring page for the cluster I was trying to VPN
> into.  If I brought up the VPN and just left things sitting still,
> nothing changed until I moved the mouse.  If I started doing things,
> once the VPN was up, I got 3 to 4 mouse-clicks worth before the mouse
> was rendered useless.
> 
> I had used FC1, 2 and 3 on this hardware with no problems at all. 
> Anyway, I spent ages fiddling with various files, trying just about
> everything and googling until my eyes bled.
> 
> In the end, the fix was easy.  Blow away FC4, install Kubuntu.  No
> more problems.
> I get KDE and I can have both a mouse and a VPN ;-)
> 
> I would have installed Gentoo like my main machine, but I've spent too
> much time trying to get this machine up and running already.  It's
> really only going to act as a vpn client machine, so I couldn't
> justify the time to install Gentoo on what is essentially a few steps
> up from being a dumb terminal.
> 
> I'm a long term (+10 years) Redhat/Fedora user, but sorry to say my
> faith in Fedora took a battering this time around.  It's not lost
> completely, but it's a bit shaken.  I still have one FC4 machine which
> seems to behave alright and I'm sure I'll line up with everyone else
> when FC5 comes out, but this taints my view a bit.
> 
> Think I might sit FC4 out and see what happens next time around. 
> Maybe the old adage of avoiding even numbered OS and service pack
> releases is true ?
> 
> Not that that will make any difference, but venting makes me feel better ;-)
> 
> Andrew
> PS BTW, Kubuntu is quite nice  ;-)
> 

I do not have a Cisco Concentrator, but I do have a Cisco PIX 515E which
I use the Cisco VPN client to connect to with FC4.  I have had not had
the problems that you are describing at all.  The Cisco VPN software
that I use is:

vpnclient-linux-4.6.00.0045-k9
and I install the patch
vpn-2.6.10-interceptor.patch
The patch basically lets it build for the newer kernels.

Mike
-- 
Mike Noble
mgnoble at gmail.com
Key ID: 0xFFDFC13B
Keyserver: http://pgpkeys.mit.edu




More information about the fedora-list mailing list