OpenConnect VPN client.
Description: VPN client compatible with Cisco AnyConnect SSL VPN
Keywords: OpenConnect, AnyConnect, Cisco, VPN, SSLVPN, SSL VPN

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OpenConnect VPN client

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# Running as non-root user

Under normal circumstances OpenConnect needs to be run as the root user. If it cannot create the local `tun` network interface, you will see an error such as:

      Failed to bind (TUNSETIFF) tun device: Operation not permitted

or in older versions, "`TUNSETIFF failed: Operation not permitted`". The simple fix for this problem is, of course, to run OpenConnect as root.

For security reasons, it is better if network-facing code can run without root privileges — and there are a few options which allow OpenConnect to run as an unprivileged user instead.

## Pre-configured `tun` device

On Linux, it's possible to create its `tun` device in advance. For example:

    # ip tuntap add vpn0 mode tun user dwmw2

This creates a device `vpn0` which can be opened by user `dwmw2` who can pass traffic to/from it without needing any elevated privileges. You can now tell OpenConnect to use that device by adding "`-i vpn0`" to its command-line arguments. Note that the `/dev/net/tun` device node should be readable and writeable by everyone. (Some distributions misconfigure that, so if it isn't world-writeable then please file a bug against your distribution.)

Of course, something does also need to configure the IP addresses and routing. You could either add "`-s /bin/true`" to OpenConnect's command line to stop it trying to run vpnc-script for itself, and manually configure the network as root too. Or you could use "`-s 'sudo -E /etc/vpnc/vpnc-script'`" so that OpenConnect itself runs without elevated privileges but can still invoke `vpnc-script` as root. Note the `-E` part which ensures the environment variables with the configuration are actually passed through to `vpnc-script`.

NetworkManager usually has a dedicated unprivileged user `nm-openconnect` and runs OpenConnect as that user, having pre-created the `tun` device for it. OpenConnect then invokes a "vpnc-script" provided by NetworkManager which just passes all the configuration back to NetworkManager over DBus.

## SOCKS / port-forwarding proxy

An alternative option which doesn't require any root access at all, is simply not to create the `tun` device and modify the system's network configuration. Instead, OpenConnect can spawn a user-supplied program, passing all data traffic through a UNIX socket to that program.

This option can be used in conjunction with a userspace TCP stack such as lwip to provide SOCKS access to the VPN, without requiring root privileges at all.

SOCKS proxy implementions suitable for being used from OpenConnect include:

- ocproxy
- tunsocks