Security-Protocols

So after installing the latest version of Parallels my Cisco VPN client broke and would give the following error on launch:

Error 51: Unable to communicate with the VPN subsystem.
Please make sure that you have at least one network interface that is currently active and has an IP address and start this application again.

I tried uninstalling Parallels and reinstalling the VPN client, still no go. After doing some digging around, I found out how to fix the problem so I figured I would post it since im probably not the only one having this issue.

First launch terminal.app and execute the following:


$ ifconfig -a

fw0: flags=8863 mtu 2030
inet 169.254.30.140 netmask 0xffff0000 broadcast 169.254.255.255
lladdr 00:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
media: autoselect status: inactive
supported media: autoselect


I have removed the rest of the details, but what we are interested in is fw0. What is fw0? Well its the firewire ethernet interface. Also, if you dont see fw0 yours might be fw1.

So then execute:

$ sudo ifconfig fw0 down

Now try launching your Cisco VPN client, it should work. If you would like to have fw0 disabled on boot, do the following below:

$ sudo pico /System/Library/StartupItems/CiscoVPN/CiscoVPN


Then change the StartService() function to the following:


StartService ()
{
#disable fw0
/sbin/ifconfig fw0 down

if [ -d $CISCO_VPN_DIR ]; then
ConsoleMessage "Starting Cisco Systems VPN Driver"
kextload $CISCO_VPN_DIR
fi
}