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VPN's on PowerPC

timidpimpin

timidpimpin

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Nov 10, 2018
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Anyone else use a VPN on PowerPC? Until today I only used it on my Intel Macs, and with a universal OpenVPN client named Tunnelblick. It runs on 10.4 to 10.10, but they also have newer versions for more current Mac OS.

Get it here - https://tunnelblick.net/downloadsDeprecated.html

Most VPN services have their own client, and these all need Intel Macs, but they all completely support OpenVPN clients also. All I had to do was create an OpenVPN 2.3 config file, which is a tool offered on my account page for my VPN service.

I have also switched my Intel Macs over to the newest version of Tunnelblick. It's lighter than my VPN's own client, and doesn't have the Ruby crashing issues.

My VPN in action on my PowerBook G4 12"
Picture-3.png
 
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Something I should add... It's good that this version of this client only supports OpenVPN 2.3, because this limits you to CBC encryption. On OpenVPN 2.4 and above there is the slightly more secure standard of GCM encryption, but this is much heavier on the CPU. Even at just 128bit. CBC is still very good, and actually relied on by more people overall, and as implied is lighter on your resources.

I would say a VPN is an absolute necessity for WIFI users especially. Also... a VPN is a great way to add a lot more security to these older OS we all use on our PowerPC hardware. I pay $40 US per year. You can use it on up to 5 devices with most.
 
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I think you use PIA as your VPN provider (like me!). Every PowerMac I own is run through a VPN, especially my iBook G3 since it doesn't support WPA2 and I have to route it to the WEP router used for my DS. Glad someone else uses one on PPC to secure themselves!
 
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I think my question is related... My University's VPN is done using Cisco Anyconnect software.

Is there an alternative for PowerPC? I have not found a working version of AnyConnect for my PowerBook. It gets useful to access journals which are behind a paywall... (Yes, sci-hub is there always to help but if my institution pays...)
[doublepost=1549271414][/doublepost]I think my question is related... My University's VPN is done using Cisco Anyconnect software.

Is there an alternative for PowerPC? I have not found a working version of AnyConnect for my PowerBook. It gets useful to access journals which are behind a paywall... (Yes, sci-hub is there always to help but if my institution pays...)
 
The VPN service is what you pay for... not the software. OpenVPN clients will allow you to use any VPN. I'm not really sure what you're asking though. Tunnelblick can be an alternative for any VPN client.
 
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EnriqueG said:
I think my question is related... My University's VPN is done using Cisco Anyconnect software.

Is there an alternative for PowerPC? I have not found a working version of AnyConnect for my PowerBook. It gets useful to access journals which are behind a paywall... (Yes, sci-hub is there always to help but if my institution pays...)
[doublepost=1549271414][/doublepost]I think my question is related... My University's VPN is done using Cisco Anyconnect software.

Is there an alternative for PowerPC? I have not found a working version of AnyConnect for my PowerBook. It gets useful to access journals which are behind a paywall... (Yes, sci-hub is there always to help but if my institution pays...)
Click to expand...
My workplace uses Cisco Anyconnect as well. I use OpenConnect on both my Intel MBP (company-provided computer) and on my PB G4 (for the rare occasion I need to look at something work-related from it-I generally keep work and personal devices separate).
When I tried to install OpenConnect from TigerBrew, there was a minor issue with the formula on Leopard. I corrected it and was going to make a PR but alas I never did. I'll try to go ahead and do that soon so others will have access.
Here's the issue on tigerbrew's github if anyone's interested: https://github.com/mistydemeo/tigerbrew/issues/584
 
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mina9000 said:
I think they both have the same problems and both needs to have their damaged capacitors exchanged. Would it make things worse if a reflowed a non-problematic GPU? Or would it just make it “better”? Does anyone know what that black cable is for? I think it is for the harddrive sensor, but there is no plug for it? Maybe the previous owner changed the HDD?
Click to expand...

?

I think you posted in the wrong thread my friend. :)
 
dbdjre0143 said:
My workplace uses Cisco Anyconnect as well. I use OpenConnect on both my Intel MBP (company-provided computer) and on my PB G4 (for the rare occasion I need to look at something work-related from it-I generally keep work and personal devices separate).
When I tried to install OpenConnect from TigerBrew, there was a minor issue with the formula on Leopard. I corrected it and was going to make a PR but alas I never did. I'll try to go ahead and do that soon so others will have access.
Here's the issue on tigerbrew's github if anyone's interested: https://github.com/mistydemeo/tigerbrew/issues/584
Click to expand...


So for G4s the way is installing OpenConnect? Thabks, I will try it. However if you found problems installing and have figured out how to solve them I'll be so grateful if you share your findings :)

Accessing my university VPN will be crucial this semester... I have my Macbook Air though.
 
timidpimpin said:
Anyone else use a VPN on PowerPC? Until today I only used it on my Intel Macs, and with a universal OpenVPN client named Tunnelblick. It runs on 10.4 to 10.10, but they also have newer versions for more current Mac OS.
Get it here - https://tunnelblick.net/downloadsDeprecated.html
Click to expand...
Does Tunnelblick support the 'Cisco IPsec' protocol? - I've spent a lot of time to establish a VPN-connection with my PPC to my Office-network without success.
 
bobesch said:
Does Tunnelblick support the 'Cisco IPsec' protocol? - I've spent a lot of time to establish a VPN-connection with my PPC to my Office-network without success.
Click to expand...
No because they use openVPN, thats a SSL VPN.

IPsec needs to be implemented in kernel space.
 
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Traace said:
No because they use openVPN, thats a SSL VPN.
IPsec needs to be implemented in kernel space.
Click to expand...

Have you been able to connect a PPC/Leopard to a "Fritz!Box-VPN"?
I even tried that via PPC/Leopard/VPC7/WinXP-Fundamentals, but no success.
Well I'm not skilled enough to get it working beyond standard "CiscoIPsec" on intelMac or iOS.

(going the VPC7/WinXP-Fundamentals way would be necessary anyway, since I need the RDP-Client v.6 to connect with ma WinServer'08)
 
bobesch said:
Have you been able to connect a PPC/Leopard to a "Fritz!Box-VPN"?
I even tried that via PPC/Leopard/VPC7/WinXP-Fundamentals, but no success.
Well I'm not skilled enough to get it working beyond standard "CiscoIPsec" on intelMac or iOS.

(going the VPC7/WinXP-Fundamentals way would be necessary anyway, since I need the RDP-Client v.6 to connect with ma WinServer'08)
Click to expand...

I did never tried that tbh, I setup vpn with openvpn_server on linux hosts. Its very good and working fine on all devices around. Old and new.

Can you use a custom router, connecting it to your CiscoIPSec VPN and share that to all clients that are connected to this router? Like a "Site to Site IPSec Tunnel"
 
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Traace said:
I did never tried that tbh, I setup vpn with openvpn_server on linux hosts. Its very good and working fine on all devices around. Old and new.
Can you use a custom router, connecting it to your CiscoIPSec VPN and share that to all clients that are connected to this router? Like a "Site to Site IPSec Tunnel"
Click to expand...

Thanks for your help and patience ... I guess, I'm only able to cook the standard-recepies and gonna fail to use anything beyond CiscoIPsec with my MBP (well, after all I'm happy to make that CiscoIPsec-stuff work on my own)
 
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dbdjre0143 said:
Finally got around to making the one-liner PR for the openconnect formula on tigerbrew. Available here: https://github.com/mistydemeo/tigerbrew/pull/628. You can always make the same change locally until that gets merged.
[doublepost=1549406516][/doublepost]Also, @Traace, I forgot to mention, per the other thread where you mentioned this, the version of openconnect this installs for me is 7.06.
Click to expand...

Hi thanks for that fix.
7.06 looks pretty old doesn't it? ^^ I updated it to current 8.02 now, including your fix for building.

It builded just fine with macports but I also ported it to tigerbrew afterwards.

formula: https://github.com/Traace/tigerbrew_fixes/blob/master/Library/Formula/openconnect.rb

Can you try to build it ? I don't have tigerbrew installed on this machine :)
 
I use Tunnelblick on my OS X PowerPC machines, and just use the command line OpenVPN under linux. IPVanish is who I ended up with, as all of the other VPNs (the cheapest one, PIA, unfortunately, being one of them) had issues with massive bandwidth slowdown for me. $10 a month makes it worth the fast connection for me.
 
I really have difficulties in understanding VPN ...
In the past I had a VPN-capable router and used DynDNS-service to get connected.
Now I've switched to an all-in-one box for voip and internet-access, that provides VPN-connectivity.
I've installed the same box (Fritz!Box) at home and at the office and VPN via CiscoIPsec works like a charm (both with intelMacs and iOS).
No extra charge.
Only legacy PPC are left behind, since I havn't been able to find any VPNclient providing CiscoIPsec for PPC.
What's the issue about having to pay for VPN-service?
 
For the average user it's much more user friendly to just use the VPN service's own app, but these all need Intel Macs like I mention in the OP. The one with the deepest into the past Mac support is Express VPN, and their client starts support at 10.6+. But most of the VPN's now need 10.12 from 2016 as the minimum Mac OS, yet they support Windows 7 going back to 2009. I use PIA and their newest official client needs 10.12. I was using their legacy client, but have now moved to OpenVPN on El Capitan also.

So on PowerPC you have to use OpenVPN, and the support is for 10.4 and 10.5. OpenVPN isn't that hard to use though... just a little higher maintenance to setup and use. An example... with the VPN service client you can typically change locations with a single login. But on OpenVPN you need a config file for each server, and each config file needs your login info entered.
 
Traace said:
Hi thanks for that fix.
7.06 looks pretty old doesn't it? ^^ I updated it to current 8.02 now, including your fix for building.

It builded just fine with macports but I also ported it to tigerbrew afterwards.

formula: https://github.com/Traace/tigerbrew_fixes/blob/master/Library/Formula/openconnect.rb

Can you try to build it ? I don't have tigerbrew installed on this machine :)
Click to expand...
Sorry it took me so long to get around to trying this!
I can confirm your updated formula works like a charm. After manually replacing the openconnect formula in my brew installation with your updated version, and executing a "brew upgrade openconnect", I'm now happily running openconnect 8.02 (newer than the version currently on my Intel MBP from work! :)).
Thanks!! :apple:
[doublepost=1549900259][/doublepost]P.S.: @Traace, you should definitely make a PR back to mainline with that change.
 
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Traace said:
Hi thanks for that fix.
7.06 looks pretty old doesn't it? ^^ I updated it to current 8.02 now, including your fix for building.

It builded just fine with macports but I also ported it to tigerbrew afterwards.

formula: https://github.com/Traace/tigerbrew_fixes/blob/master/Library/Formula/openconnect.rb

Can you try to build it ? I don't have tigerbrew installed on this machine :)
Click to expand...

Hello, Traace.

I've been trying to get this working with no success...

I did the following:

Code: 
$ mv /usr/local/Library/Formula/openconnect.rb /usr/local/Library/Formula/openconnect.rb.bak

$ nano /usr/local/Library/Formula/openconnect.rb

Pasted the content of your formula, saved the file

Code: 
$brew install openconnect


Here are the output in Terminal with the error. I think it's slightly different from the one I got when using the standard formula:

Code: 
  CC       libopenconnect_la-gnutls_tpm.lo
  CC       libopenconnect_la-gnutls_tpm2.lo
  CC       libopenconnect_la-iconv.lo
  CC       libopenconnect_la-tun.lo
ld: Undefined symbols:
_gzdirect
/usr/libexec/gcc/powerpc-apple-darwin8/4.0.1/libtool: internal link edit command failed
make: *** [libopenconnect.la] Error 1

READ THIS: https://github.com/mistydemeo/tigerbrew/wiki/troubleshooting

These open issues may also help:
openconnect failed to build on 10.5 https://github.com/mistydemeo/tigerbrew/issues/584
openconnect: add libxml2 dependency to resolve build issue on older OSX https://github.com/mistydemeo/tigerbrew/pull/628

I'm sure I did something wrong but I can not troubleshoot it, my unix knowledge is... poor.
 
Hi, EnriqueG

You log is very limited, but you are building on darwin 8 (OSX Tiger) with GCC 4 , please try to build it with a updated version of libtool.

add:
Code: 
depends_on "libtool"
into that formula.
just as new entry, right under the present
Code: 
depends_on "stoken" => :optional

If it still fails, try building it with a more current compiler like gcc6.

And if even this dont work out, I might be able to create a patch for tiger. But for that I would need a build log with more debug output in it.


We did just test this on darwin 9 (OSX Leopard) sorry :( But you can test it on tiger, thats awesome :)
 
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