Ubuntu 10 + vpnc: no response from target

Question

I have Ubuntu 10.04.4 version

I installed the vpnc successfully as the following link -

   http://floppsie.comp.glam.ac.uk/Glamorgan/gaius/networks/13.html

Example of the installation

wget http://www.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/~massar/vpnc/vpnc-0.5.3.tar.gz
tar zxf vpnc-0.5.3.tar.gz
sudo apt-get install libgcrypt11-dev libgpg-error-dev
cd vpnc-0.5.3
make
sudo make install

so after installation and create the vpnc configuration file - /etc/vpnc/my.conf

and activate the vpnc as the following

vpnc my
Enter password for [email protected]: 
vpnc: no response from target

I get this bad error:

  no response from target

I tries to solve the problem by adding the following lines ( one by one )

 IKE DH Group dh2
 NAT Traversal Mode cisco-udp
 Local Port 10000
 Enable Single DES

But this not solved the problem

Please advice what could be the problem ?

I already check the resolv.conf file and Goggled on all forums but I couldn’t find the resolution

Please help

Solution 1

I found the problem

First I run the traceroute command on my linux machine

As the following:

traceroute  8.8.8.8

and I notice that all output are stars ,

this gives me the feeling that something like firewall might have blocked the network.

I asked the IT department to check this issue and indeed it was. They enabled the firewall.

So after getting IT department configured the firewall, I again checked the vpnc and vpnc worked correctly

Solution 2

Root cause the problem in my case was different, although the symptoms the same.

I start vpn connection with command:

$ sudo vpnc my

and enter password. Sometimes connection fails with message:

vpnc: no response from target

Later on without any changes done to the system or configuration I repeat the attempt and connection is successful.

I have noticed, that if I specify my password incorrectly, connection fails with different error message (clearly indicating that credentials are wrong).

If I run vpnc with debug:

$ sudo vpnc my --debug 99

I get lots of messages, ending with:

...
   got delete for old connection, ignoring..
vpnc: no response from target

The last weird thing I noticed, is that if the problem happened I have to wait till the next hour to connect. That is if I failed to connect at 9:40 I will not be able to connect until 10:00. But everything will be ok at 10:01.

Looks like it's necessary to properly close previously open connection with vpnc-disconnect. I have a strong feeling that connection problems happened if the day before I shut down my laptop without running disconnect command.