I couldn’t connect to my client’s vpn from Ubuntu 13.10 using openconnect (the open source cisco compatible vpn client that integrates nicely with Ubuntu). This seems to be a known problem in 13.10 and AFAIK shouldn’t affect 13.04 or older (certainly, it works on a colleague’s 12.04 box)

So instead I went with cisco’s own anyconnect client and it seemed to work fine. First, just browse to the vpn address in a browser. Ours is something like:

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https://vpn.example.com/vpnname

If you have java enabled in browser the client should download, if not (like me) wait for it to time out and you’ll be presented with a link to a shell script which installs the cisco vpn client. Give the script execute permissions and run it with sudo*

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  chmod +x vpnsetup.sh
  ./vpnsetup.sh

Then I simply found the cisco anyconnect client in the launcher, type in the vpn url (without the https scheme), username and password in the box, hit connect, and it seemed to work fine.

Edit: I’ve since found some links to uninstall instructions on ubuntu forums and cisco’s site, the gist of which is, run another shell script:

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  sudo /opt/cisco/vpn/bin/vpn_uninstall.sh

*As this came from inside my trusted client’s domain behind valid ssl I assumed it was safe. On your own head be it if you go running random shell scripts on your machine as root and you end up getting a new mortgage in downtown Vladivostok.