FC4 Mouse weirdness with Cisco VPN [Solved]

[Andrew Mather]

Hi Rahul

On 7/15/05, Andrew Mather <mathera at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi Rahul
> 
> On 7/15/05, Rahul Sundaram <sundaram at redhat.com> wrote:
> > Andrew Mather wrote:
> >
> > >Hi All,
> > >
> > >I have a machine running FC4 with the latest updates (as of yesterday
> > >morning), although this problem has been happening ever since the
> > >machine was installed (clean install after full format incl /home).
> > >I am using KDE as my window manager.
> > >
> > >The machine behaves quite normally and I can use the internet, local
> > >applications, terminal windows etc, just as you might expect for as
> > >long as I like with no problem.
> > >
> > >However whenever I bring up my VPN to work, which uses the Cicso VPN
> > >client, it kills the mouse within a few seconds.  The cursor moves
> > >over to the left hand side of the screen and won't come out.  Killing
> > >the VPN does not restore function, I have to restart X
> > >
> > >The VPN concentrator enforces a policy which cuts off local LAN access
> > >while the VPN is up.  This is annoying, but done for the "right
> > >reasons".
> > >
> > >
> > Is this Cisco client the proprietary one or vpnc from Fedora Extras?.
> > Can you try vpnc to see if this works better?
> 
> It's the Cisco one.  I wondered if the fact that the concentrator is
> enforcing policies like disabling local LAN access means it won't want
> to talk to any other type of client.
> 
> Our ITS guys are not very Linux friendly (well..antagonistic is
> probably a better description), so I won't get any support from them.
> 
> But it's definitely worth a shot.  I'll give it a go over the weekend sometime.

Well, I installed vpnc and as I suspected, my work's ITS have set up
the concentrator in such a way that it will only talk to proprietary
Cisco clients, so vpnc was no help.

So I reinstalled FC4 (full format and clean install).  3 times.  Glad
I had the DVD...no feeding cd's ! ;-)

Same behaviour each time.  100% reproducible.  Tried both Gnome and
KDE as default WM.  No difference.  Tried both proprietary and generic
Nvidia drivers.   No difference, so I'm pretty sure it wasn't
something in the WM or video driver area.

On further testing, the problem seemed to be related to moving and
resizing windows, or loading graphically busy web pages, like the
Ganglia cluster monitoring page for the cluster I was trying to VPN
into.  If I brought up the VPN and just left things sitting still,
nothing changed until I moved the mouse.  If I started doing things,
once the VPN was up, I got 3 to 4 mouse-clicks worth before the mouse
was rendered useless.

I had used FC1, 2 and 3 on this hardware with no problems at all. 
Anyway, I spent ages fiddling with various files, trying just about
everything and googling until my eyes bled.

In the end, the fix was easy.  Blow away FC4, install Kubuntu.  No
more problems.
I get KDE and I can have both a mouse and a VPN ;-)

I would have installed Gentoo like my main machine, but I've spent too
much time trying to get this machine up and running already.  It's
really only going to act as a vpn client machine, so I couldn't
justify the time to install Gentoo on what is essentially a few steps
up from being a dumb terminal.

I'm a long term (+10 years) Redhat/Fedora user, but sorry to say my
faith in Fedora took a battering this time around.  It's not lost
completely, but it's a bit shaken.  I still have one FC4 machine which
seems to behave alright and I'm sure I'll line up with everyone else
when FC5 comes out, but this taints my view a bit.

Think I might sit FC4 out and see what happens next time around. 
Maybe the old adage of avoiding even numbered OS and service pack
releases is true ?

Not that that will make any difference, but venting makes me feel better ;-)

Andrew
PS BTW, Kubuntu is quite nice  ;-)