VPN

General

Access to HLRS compute platforms requires a registration of the clients IP address in the firewall. If the IP address is not static a connection via VPN is recommended.

To use this feature, please contact your project supervisor and ask him to add the vpn-hww resource in the HLRS user database.

With respect to installation, configuration and usage of the required VPN client (Fortigate client), please refer to the section covering your operating system below.

Windows

Download

https://www.fortinet.com/support/product-downloads#vpn make sure to download the free FortiClient VPN application

Configuration

Using the VPN

Type your login and password to connect. If this works, you are able to login on the frontend servers using ssh e.g.

  ssh -l <your_login> hawk.hww.hlrs.de

Linux

Download

https://github.com/adrienverge/openfortivpn

On Fedora, OpenSUSE, and latest Ubuntu openfortivpn is available via the package manager of the operating system.

Note: There's also a Linux version of the official Forticlient available now, cf. https://www.forticlient.com/.

Configuration

Please insert the following data into your config file (probably /etc/openfortivpn/config):

host = rmgw.hww.hlrs.de
port = 443
username = <your username>
# trusted-cert = 5338851771baa67d1a29fa8df7d49ddbd83cbbd517c78e032bf5ab305eaba3f8
# ca-file = /usr/share/ca-certificates/mozilla/Deutsche_Telekom_Root_CA_2.crt

Remarks:

• A user certificate is not required.
• The trusted-cert (cf. next to last line in config file template given above) is the digest of the server's certificate which is subject to change every couple of years. It might hence be wise not to specify this in your config file.
• The VPN gateway uses a DFN certificate which is issued below the root CA tree of the German Telekom, one of the CA's trusted by most browsers.
• If your Openssl library is configured correctly and your certificate bundles are installed properly (e.g. via the package manager of your operating system), it should not be necessary to explicitly specify the CA certificate. Otherwise, download the required certificate here, uncomment the last line and specify the location of the downloaded file there.

Using the VPN

To use the VPN, just call the binary openfortivpn and follow the instructions:

$> openfortivpn

OS X

Download

https://www.forticlient.com or https://github.com/adrienverge/openfortivpn

On Mac OSX, openfortivpn can also be installed via Homebrew or Macports.

Using the VPN

tested with Catalina 10.15:

sudo openfortivpn -v rmgw.hww.hlrs.de:443 -u USERNAME --set-dns=0 --pppd-use-peerdns=0