Open source FortiGate (Forti SSL VPN) client support in Ubuntu

Question

Does anyone work on adding support for opensource FortiGate SSL VPN NetworkManager client to Ubuntu?

According to this blog https://blogs.gnome.org/lkundrak/2015/09/24/fortigate-ssl-vpn-support-added-to-networkmanager/ there is initial support for open source FortiGate client.

(Frontend: network-manager-fortisslvpn, Backend: openfortivpn )

If there is no one, how can I help?

I am a software developer however having no experiences Ubuntu packaging rules/contribution policies. Any constructive guidance welcome.

Solution

Since Ubuntu 18.04 (bionic), you can connect with the regular network manager by simply installing the package network-manager-fortisslvpn-gnome. Find it in Software or do

sudo apt install network-manager-fortisslvpn-gnome

(This will also install dependencies openfortivpn and network-manager-fortisslvpn.)

Then you can click Edit connections in network manager (right click the wifi icon), + to add a new one, select type Fortinet SSLVPN under the VPN heading. Give it a name, then under Gateway put in the IP address (and optionally port separated by colon, e.g. 11.22.33.44:44443) and username/password. Note that you may have to click the little symbol in the password field to select who has access to the password before you're allowed to type anything in that text field.

Save and right-click the wifi icon again, click VPN and pick the name you chose.

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If it doesn't work, that may be because you need to trust a certificate. If you have the certificate fingerprint, you can edit your connection and add it under Advanced→Trusted certificate. If you don't know your certificate, https://serverfault.com/a/922767/104546 explains how to find it from the terminal.

Comments

[moi]

I installed network-manager-fortisslvpn and openfortivpn, but nothing new shows up in the Network Manager "Add connection" dialog. (On Ubuntu 16.04.3 LTS with GNOME Shell 3.18.5)

[Patrick Decat]

@moi did you restart NetworkManager with sudo systemctl restart network-manager after installing these packages?

[jlSta]

Don't forget to install ´´´network-manager-fortisslvpn-gnome´´´