Guide: Client VPN on Linux (Debian)

ecce
Here to help

Guide: Client VPN on Linux (Debian)

I switched from Mac to Linux recently and a thing I got stuck on for a while is the easy way to establish L2TP VPN connections from a mac to a Meraki firewall. On a mac it is very easy to set up, but on Linux I ran into some trouble getting it working. Now that is does work I'd thought I'd share a solution. Please note that this is a bit static and may break if future meraki updates changes cipher suite for example.

 

Ofcourse everything Linux-related is distro-depending so this is tested on Debian 10, kernel 4.19, i3wm, since that is what I use. The firewall is a Meraki MX64.

 

1. Make sure network-manager is handling network connections. Read this. 

2. You need the following packets (depending on WM): 

 

 

network-manager-l2tp-gnome network-manager-strongswan network-manager-l2tp strongswan-nm

 

 

3. Restart network-manager

 

 

systemd restart network-manager

 

 

4. There is a daemon running called xl2tpd that messes up things. There's info about this on this forum. So:

 

 

sudo systemd stop xl2tpd
sudo systemd disable xl2tpd

 

 

 

5. Create a VPN connection in nm-connection-editor and modify IPSec and PPP properties accordingly:

 

2020-01-08_12-28.png

 

2020-01-08_12-26_1.png

2020-01-08_12-26_2.png

 

Cheers!

1 Reply 1
BrechtSchamp
Kind of a big deal

Nice! Thanks for taking the time to share your findings!

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