[Vpn-help] connecting to SonicWall

[Chris Hermansen]

Good people;

Our company operates a SonicWall firewall / VPN gateway, and I work 
remotely on a laptop running Ubuntu, usually behind a Siemens Gigaset 
ADSL router / wireless box.  I hope to be able to use the ShrewSoft VPN 
Access manager for Linux to establish a VPN connection through this mess 
back to the "mother ship".

So far, I have had no success.  When I attempt to run the connection I 
have built, using info provided by our systems people and what little 
support SonicWall provides in the way of Linux configuration info, I see 
the following messages:

config loaded for site 'XXX'
attached to key daemon...
peer configured
iskamp proposal configured
esp proposal configured
client configured
local id configured
remote ide configured
pre-shared key configured
bring up tunnel...

(and then a long-ish wait)

gateway not responding
tunnel disabled
detached from key daemon...

My level of understanding of computers, networking, Linux, and so forth 
is pretty good but I must admit I don't really have a clear picture of 
the whole IPSec situation, so many of the configuration components in 
the VPN Access manager are mysterious to me.

Given my basic knowledge of the whole thing, from the above log of 
messages, I can't tell whether the Access manager is getting past the 
wireless router and out onto the internet, or much else.

I'm hoping some kind soul on this list will have some practical advice 
for me.

-- 
Regards,

Chris Hermansen · mailto:c.hermansen at telus.net