VPN - Cisco Secure Client via Webpage for Linux

Overview

The Cisco Secure Client (formerly Cisco AnyConnect) VPN client is a product developed by Cisco that allows users to connect to the Texas A&M VPN. A VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a network that uses primarily public telecommunication infrastructure, such as the Internet, to provide remote offices or traveling user’s access to a central organizational network. This document discusses installing and running the Secure Client VPN Client on Linux.

NOTE: As of October 1st, 2018, any campus member wishing to use VPN must be enrolled in Duo to use it. For more information, please visit Duo and VPN.

Instructions

1. To install the pre-configured VPN client, start by going to connect.tamu.edu. Here you will need to log in with your NetID and your NetID password.
   
   NOTE: Contact Help Desk Central at (979) 845-8300 if you are unable to connect using your NetID and your NetID password.
   
   
   
    
2. On "connect.tamu.edu" you are presented with two options for “GROUP:". Those are “tunnel_all_traffic” and “tunnel_tamu_traffic.” The tunnel_tamu_traffic option will only tunnel data destined for sites ending in .tamu.edu. 
   
   The tunnel_all_traffic option will tunnel all data through the VPN. This is necessary when using the VPN to access articles and journals from resources that require that you be connecting from a Texas A&M owned IP address.
    
3. The website will detect your system. This will take a few minutes at most but once it is done, it will look like this: 
   
   
    
4. When the detection process finishes, you should be taken to this screen which will give you a choice between a download option and an automatic provisioning option. We will be choosing the download option for this process.
   
   
    
5. When you click the Download for Linux button, you will then prompted to download a script file that should end up in your downloads folder: 
   
   
   
    
6. Once the script file is downloaded, open a terminal window. Then navigate to the Downloads directory by inputting the command 

   cd ~/Downloads

   Once there, make the script file executable. The name and version may change depending on when you will be reading these instructions. We will be using the current name and version at the time this article was drafted.

   chmod +x  cisco-secure-client-linux-5.0.00556-core-vpn-webdeploy-k9.sh

   After the script is made executable, then it can be run by inputting the command

   sudo ./cisco-secure-client-linux-5.0.00556-core-vpn-webdeploy-k9.sh

   The the results should look like this:
   
   
    
7. The Cisco Secure Client client should now be found within the applications menu. Once found, run it and there should be a window that looks like this:
   
   
    
8. In the "connect to:" field, type in "connect.tamu.edu" and click on Connect. Afterwards, you will then be prompted for a NetID and password. It should look like this: 
   
   
    
9. Click on Connect and the connection should be established. If you had enrolled for DUO, you should receive a push notification in order to authenticate.