Re: How Do I Get NetworkManager to Use Parameters Not in GUI Config (e.g., "Application version")

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Fri, 2009-09-18 at 13:01 -0400, Jamie Jackson wrote:
> Hi Folks,
> 
> My end goal is to be able to connect NetworkManager to my corporate VPN.

At the moment, you can't do this; part of the reason is to ensure that
the UI is not cluster-bombed with checkboxes and dropdowns that nobody
can hope to understand.  But obviously, some options are more used than
others.

What we should do here (patches anyone?) is do an Advanced... button
like the openvpn plugin I guess.  Hide a bunch of stuff like NAT
traversal, dead-peer detection, application version, etc behind that
button like the openvpn plugin does.

Basically, we should pick sane defaults so that you don't *have* to
touch that Advanced... button most of the time, but if your network
admin decides to be a jackass, at least you can get to it.

This involves a bit of glade work to put the button into the UI, then
some code work (like copying the nm-openvpn plugins 'advanced-dialog.c'
over to vpnc) and fixing it up.  Not hugely hard.  Then you add the
option to the whitelist in src/nm-vpnc-service.c, but we need to
*validate* the option there too; we shouldn't be letting users type
arbitrary strings and pass them through to vpnc without at least
checking them for sanity (like length, reasonable format, etc).

Dan


> First things first:
> 
> If I convert the PCF to vpnc format (pcf2vpnc myprofile.pcf
> myprofile.vpnc), I can't connect with the CLI vpnc client. However,
> after some research and trial-and-error, I found that if I added a
> couple more parameters, I *can* successfully connect using the CLI
> vpnc:
> 
> sudo vpnc ./pcf2vpncGeneratedConfig.vpnc --local-port 0
> --application-version "Cisco Systems VPN Client 0.3:WinNT"
> 
> How do I get NetworkManager to use these extra parameters?
> 
> I'm not a C developer, but I see some references in code (end of
> email), which would suggest that at least the "Application version"
> vpnc key is supported *somehow,* but I don't know what to do to make
> this kind of thing happen.
> 
> BTW, although I'm looking at code, the ideal solution would involve
> some runtime solution that would allow me to continue to use Ubuntu
> repo packages.
> 
> Also, please note that I'm using NetworkManager Applet 0.7.1, which is
> not the stock version--I got the upgrade through the NM Ubuntu PPA
> repository. (I believe the *current* version in Jaunty is 0.7.1.)
> 
> Please help me get this sorted.
> 
> (Also, big thanks to Dan Williams and Brian Millett, who have helped
> me get this far.)
> 
> Thanks,
> Jamie
> 
> P.S. I tried this: "NM_VPNC_KEY_APP_VERSION="Cisco Systems VPN Client
> 0.3:WinNT" nm-applet" from the CLI, but it didn't connect. This could
> be because this is a completely misguided attempt (I don't know what
> I'm doing), or it could be because I'm still missing the equivalent
> "--local-port 0" parameter.
> 
> ./src/nm-vpnc-service.h:#define NM_VPNC_KEY_APP_VERSION "Application Version"
> ./src/nm-vpnc-service.c:	{ NM_VPNC_KEY_APP_VERSION,
> G_TYPE_STRING, 0, 0 },
> ./properties/tests/test-import-export.c:	{ NM_VPNC_KEY_APP_VERSION,
>        NULL },
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