SSL VPN

[Rick Bilonick]

On Thu, 2008-06-19 at 07:51 -0700, Mike Bird wrote:
> On Thu June 19 2008 04:55:17 Rick Bilonick wrote:
> > I guess I did not explain well. First, I ssh from the server (which is
> > behind a firewall) out to my home computer and leave this connection
> > open. Then when I go home, is there any way that I can use this
> > connection from home? That is, can I somehow tunnel back through from
> > home to the server over this connection? I may be totally off base, but
> > I thought I read somewhere that this could be done.
> 
> Just a reminder that, unless you are yourself the head of your
> IT department, you should coordinate this with the head of your
> IT department.
> 
> Home computers are rife with malware.  Therefore professionally
> managed VPNs usually include protection such as firewalls.
> 
> If some malware gets into the business, and a security scan
> detects an unauthorized tunnel, you could be looking at a
> lawsuit or even criminal charges.  So make sure that tunnel
> is authorized, eh?
> 
> --Mike Bird
> 

As it turns out, they use Juniper SSL VPN which deploys a java applet
and should work fine with Fedora. The problem is, the java applet does
not seem to run using IcedTea java (which is installed by default in
Fedora 8). So I removed it and tried to install Sun's JRE (first trying
the rpm and then the non-rpm version). However, after repeated attempts
(looking at at least 3 web sites detailing how to do this) I still can't
get Firefox (or Konqueror) to run ANY java applet. (At least with
IcedTea, java applets generally run using Firefox and Konqueror except
for Juniper.)

Why is getting Sun's java so difficult under Fedora 8? I've run through
all the steps. Is there something special about X86-64? I'm going to try
to install Java on a 386 laptop.

At the moment, I think to use Juniper, you need to access the ssl vpn
website on the server and the remote computer. I will be working with IT
to get this going.

Rick B.