Arch Linux

werdna94

Member

From: Marist College

Registered: 2012-04-29

Posts: 12

Nac without gui?

Hello, I am trying to connect to my college's network through arch. The issue is that the school uses the Cisco Any Connect vpn client and Nac agent client to connect to the network. Since I just installed arch onto my laptop, I do not yet have X11 installed. While I have correctly setup online and offline netcfg profiles I have to launch the Cisco java applet in order to have access to the web.

Links obviously does not have a java plugin, and even if it did I would not be able to connect to the network because the Cisco java applet launches a gui window. I tried downloading the necessary X packages through my windows partition and installing them using pacman -U, but then I discovered dozens of extra dependencies that I would need to install for that to work. Since I do not have internet access installing every single one of those dependencies would be tedious.

I have tried to find somebody in the IT department or the Computer Society to give me assistance but I have had no luck. Despite the existence of a Linux research lab, I appear to be the only person on campus who actually uses Linux (proprietary systems are yucky).  I want to know if there is a workaround for my issue--is there a guiless NAC and vpn client that is compatible with Cisco? Are there any other possible solutions?

Thank you for your assistance .

EDIT: As An alternative is there any way I can download all of the required xorg files off the archlinux website without having to go out of the way to download every individual dependency for every package? Again, the issue is that I can not access the network through my linux partition. I can connect to it, but I can not download off of the package repository or browse the internet without a java and javascript enabled browser. The network authenticates me by prompting me with a cisco nac gui window and asks for my username and password. Is it possible to do this without a gui browser?

EDIT AGAIN: Can openvpn achieve what I want it to? I want to connect to the network vpn with my username and password.

Last edited by werdna94 (2012-09-16 21:02:48)