Due to my work I sometimes have to VPN to my job from home. But I use a Linux PowerPC laptop and have to log in to a Cisco box. Cisco doesn’t provides support for Linux on PowerPC. So where is the solution? The solution is VPNC. How do we install it? Easy:

Now we need to configure the config file. We are going to modify /etc/vpnc/example.conf.

shell$ sudo cp /etc/vpnc/example.conf /etc/vpnc/connect.conf
shell$ cat /etc/vpnc/connect.conf
#IPSec gateway
#IPSec ID
#IPSec secret
#IKE Authmode hybrid
#Xauth username

We need to replace the gateway entry with the IP/hostname of the server we want to connect to, the ID with the group you belong to, the secret with the password for the group you belong to and the username with your username. Once configured you just have to fire up vpnc.

shell$ sudo vpnc /etc/vpnc/connect.conf
Enter password for username@server:
Connect Banner:
| Connecting to VPN.

VPNC started in background (pid: 4566)…
shell$

Now you should be able to see a tun interface when executing /sbin/ifconfig.

shell$ /sbin/ifconfig tun0
tun0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
inet addr:192.168.20.22 P-t-P:192.168.20.22 Mask:255.255.255.255
UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST MTU:1412 Metric:1
RX packets:2 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:2 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:500
RX bytes:290 (290.0 B) TX bytes:154 (154.0 B)
shell$

Enjoy your VPN connection. More info here and here.