Saturday, August 27, 2016

Setting up the VMWare Client for Northern Kentucky University on Linux (Ubuntu 14.04, 16.04 & 18.04)

As I am teaching the Advanced Business Programming (BIS 305) class at NKU this Fall semester and only have one Windows system, I thought it good to get the VMWare client setup on my Linux systems so that I can access the College of Informatics Lab VM and use Visual Studio 2015 in grading assignments, etc. 

For you other Linux users, here are the steps:
First run command below to active the TUN module:

$ sudo /sbin/modprobe tun

Next, install OpenConnect in order to connect to NKU's VPN:

$ sudo apt-get install openconnect
Now let's download and install the linux VMWare Client from the download site which is at the time of this writing at:
https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/info?slug=desktop_end_user_computing/vmware_horizon_clients/3_0

After downloading the file appropriate for you linux distribution, change into the directory where you downloaded the client bundle file and do the following in that directory from the command prompt substituting the name of the file:

$ sudo sh *filename*.bundle
Also at the time if this writing the 64bit client download was named: VMware-Horizon-Client-4.8.0-8518891.x64.bundle. Accept the default setting as you move through the installation.

Next, to connect to the NKU VPN run:
$ sudo openconnect vpn.nku.edu
Here is what is output to the terminal (again at the time of this writing):
POST https://vpn.nku.edu/
Attempting to connect to server 74.143.180.100:443
SSL negotiation with vpn.nku.edu
Server certificate verify failed: signer not found

 Certificate from VPN server "vpn.nku.edu" failed verification.
Reason: signer not found
Enter 'yes' to accept, 'no' to abort; anything else to view:
From here enter the word: yes
You will see the above again as you will be redirected to another VPN server. Once you press Enter the 2nd time and after answering "yes" the output to the terminal continues as:
Connected to HTTPS on vpn.nku.edu
XML POST enabled
Please enter your username and password.
GROUP: [sslgroup_users|vpn_test]:
From here enter the word and then press Enter: sslgroup_users
The output to the terminal then continues as:
POST https://vpn.nkuedu/
XML POST enabled
Please enter your username and password.
Username: YourUserNameHere
Password: YourPasswordHere
POST https://vpn.nku.edu/
Got CONNECT response: HTTP/1.1 200 OK
CSTP connected. DPD 30, Keepalive 20
RTNETLINK answers: File exists
Connected tun1 as 10.150.128.40, using SSL
Established DTLS connection (using GnuTLS). Ciphersuite (DTLS0.9)-(RSA)-(AES-256-CBC)-(SHA1).
Keep the terminal window open while the VPN session is active. Network resources should now be available. To close the VPN session, press Ctrl+Z in the terminal window. Abruptly killing the terminal window without properly closing out of the VPN session can lead to issues when attempting to reconnect in the future. 

From here you are connected. Now open the VMWare Horizon Client (from a new terminal at the command prompt enter: vmware-view), in the VMWare Horizon Client set the server URL to view.nku.edu, login with your NKU user credentials, and enjoy.

Some information taken from: http://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2014/11/connect-cisco-anyconnect-vpn-ubuntu/