Cisco VPN problem with DNS

[Gavin McDonald]

Hi list,

I have a client with a RHEL ES 3 server, 64-bit on Pentium D-930.
We have tried Cisco VPN Client v4.7 and v4.8.

The problem is as such:

The cisco VPN client connects successfully, and IP connectivity is
established.  the RHEL client can connect to all remote servers by IP.
However, DNS is non-functional.  some digging shows that /etc/resolv.conf is
not updated correctly by the VPN client.  Where this really gets strange
though, is that even after correcting resolv.conf to point to the DNS
server, (Which he can ping and even `tracepath <DNS_IP>/53`,) DNS lookups
still fail.  he's been using /etc/hosts to define remote hosts, and name
lookups for servers defined as such work fine.

I've checked his iptables, and unless I'm mistaken, the first rule should
exlude that as the culprit:

> Chain RH-Firewall-1-INPUT (2 references)
> target     prot opt source               destination
> ACCEPT     all  --  anywhere             anywhere

this rule should catch and allow ALL traffic, right?

So at this point I'm stymied.  I have now tasked our cisco rep with
verifying the VPN server-side setup, but it appears that even if the VPN
were to hand the DNS address correctly, DNS would still fail for a reason
that eludes me.  (as manual edits to resolv.conf fail to work.)

I hope you guys can see something I missed,

Regards,

Gavin McDonald
========================
EVI Logistic Enterprises
email: me at gavitron.com
phone: (604) 313-3845