Connect to Fortinet VPN using Openfortivpn

Fortivpn does offer 2 clients for linux, one is for redhat family and the other installer is for ubuntu/debian family. You can download the installers from here. 

But for those who wanted to used opensource vpn client to connect to Fortinet VPN, we can use openfortivpn. Please follow below steps to connect using openfortivpn

1. Install openfortivpn

$ sudo apt install openfortivpn

2. We can connect just by using openfortivpn with some options, like below

$ sudo openfortivpn myvpnserver.local:10443 -u vpnuser -p mypass 

where:

-u : please provide username

-p : please provide password

myvpnserver.local:10443 : please provide vpn server address and port

3. We can also use a configuration file with content like below

host = myvpnserver.local

port = 10443 

username = vpnuser

password = mypass

save the above file as myvpn.config and connect using below command so that openfortivpn can use the configuration inside the file to connect to vpn

$ sudo openfortivpn -c myvpn.config 

4. We can get all the configuration for the file, by referring to the manual page of openfortivpn. We can access the manual by running below command

$ man openfortivpn

Another Way To Check UDP Port to a Linux Server

In a previous post, I have shared a way to check for udp port allowance to a linux server using netcat and ngrep.

I have found out an even easier way to accomplish this, just by using netcat, without the need to install additional software like ngrep.

To do this, first we need to setup a netcat to listen to the udp port, in the target machine. For example, we wanted to test udp port 10000 allowance, just run below command on the target machine

$ nc -klu 10000

The command will hang there, waiting for a connection to be sent to it.

In the client machine, just use netcat to send some text over to the target machine, like below (assuming the ip address of the target machine is 10.10.10.10)

$ echo "testing udp" | nc -u 10.10.10.10.10000

If the udp port is not blocked, we will see the "testing udp" text printed on the terminal in the target machine, where we listen for 10000 udp, like example below

Run A Mysql Query From Command Line

To run a mysql query directly from command line, without entering the interactive mode, use -e flag, like below

$ mysql -u user -p -e 'show tables;' mydbname

In the above example, the output would be, a list of tables inside mydbname, displayed on the command line, after you have put in the mysql user password.