When I start VPNC-gui with a preloaded .pcf file which works on a Windows Cisco VPN client I get a message

Launching vpnc... be patient....


and then I have to be patient for a very long time.....
Any configuration problem ?
Everything installed correctly.

This threw me off too. Try the connection, it seems to work while you are being patient.

Frank

Thanks ! When I opened a website behind the VPN firewall it showed up so it worked !

Well also vpnc-gui doesn't allow you to set any extended options.
Some VPNs still use old algorithms which are now considered insecure. With some switches to vpnc you can achieve a connection, but not through vpnc-gui.

A couple of usage note for vpnc:
i. I'm using the download version 0.5.1r334-1 installed by the AppMgr.
ii. I'm NOT using a version available from http://www.unix-ag.uni-kl.de/~massar/vpnc/
iii.I'm still new to this community, so if this has been said elsewhere, I haven't found it.

1. If /etc/resolv.conf doesn't exist, it will create one and leave it there. This might break other dns settings that could be stored in /tmp/resolv.conf.wlan0
-Fix this by putting a dummy file at /etc/resolv.conf or editing the /etc/vpnc/vpnc-script
-If you ever crash out of the vpn, you may have to manually restore /etc/resolv.conf.
-The default/dummy /etc/resolv.conf file gets copied to /var/run/vpnc/resolv.conf-backup on
connect and back to /etc/resolv.conf on disconnect.

2. The 'Import PCF' button didn't seem to work for the complex scheme in the PCF file provided by my employer. To get around this, at a terminal shell, I ran 'vpnc --long-help > vpnc.help.txt. I commented (#) every line in this file. Then I uncommented only the options I needed and set the best guess of what the values should be. Once done, I put this file in /home/user/.vpnc-gui/myWork.vpnc. Initially I had debug on to make sure it told me what options I got wrong (hopefully). With the file in /home/user/.vpnc-gui, the app vpnc-gui saw it and I can use it to connect/disconnect nicely.

3. Once connected, I left vpnc-gui open for fear the 'Disconnect' button wouldn't be available if I closed and reopened the gui with the vpn connected. This might not be necessary, but I'm still playing with it. I briefly looked at the script to see how to disconnect from the command line, but didn't spend much time at it.

So, I got it to work with a few suggestions from this community. Thank you for putting this app together and making it available! Now I can rDesktop or VNC into my work machine, and look like I'm there sending out emails. ;-)

Peace!