Migration Notice: LegacyVPN is undergoing a migration to Cisco's ASA VPN. Please refer to https://isea.utoronto.ca/services/vpn/utorvpn/ for documentation on the new service.

Installing LegacyVPN

Note that if you are using a version of Linux that uses NetworkManager to manage network connections, the instructions on this page provide an easier install path.

  1. Go to https://vpn.utoronto.ca/, and log in with your UTORid and password.
  2. Follow the instructions there to create your LegacyVPN certificates. Once created, download both the installation script install.sh and your certificates/configuration file utorvpn.ovpn.

    Note: If you place the file utorvpn.ovpn in the same directory as install.sh, your configuration file will be installed automatically. Otherwise you will have to install this file manually. See step 5.

  3. Log in as root on your machine, change to the directory containing the two files you just downloaded, and run the installation script: 
        # sh install.sh
  4. This script will compile the OpenVPN source on your computer and attempt to make the necessary configuration changes. You will need to have the OpenSSL libraries installed because OpenVPN uses these for encryption. OpenVPN also requires tunneling support to be built into your kernel, or available as a module. You will be prompted for a number of options when this script starts:

    OptionDefaultDescription
    Build Directory /usr/local/src where to build the source code
    Configuration Parameters   special configuration options to send OpenVPN's configure script
    Binary Location /usr/local/sbin location of the OpenVPN binary
    OpenSSL headers /usr/include/openssl location of the OpenSSL development headers
    Configuration Directory /etc/openvpn where your certificates and configuration files will live

  5. If you did not follow the advice given in the note of Step 2, you will have to manually install your configuration file at this point. The directory you specified to hold your certificates has been created (we will assume here that you used the default, /etc/openvpn). Move your configuration file (utorvpn.ovpn) to this directory: 
        # mv utorvpn.ovpn /etc/openvpn
  6. That's it! Now that you have installed LegacyVPN on your computer, continue reading here to learn how to start up and use LegacyVPN.

If you find a particular Unix-based OS that this install script does not work for, please email us at vpn@utoronto.ca with the error that you are receiving.


last updated 2006/10/27 19:21:57: v. 1.1