vShield Edge?—?OS X & SSL VPN

‘The installation failed’ isn’t a message you want to see when setting up remote access to your shiny new private cloud?—?however it’s quite possible that you’ll have seen this once or twice if you’re using the vShield Edge SSL VPN on OS X.

Unfortunately the installation scripts provided with the installation package do not include a definition for any version of OS X above Lion.

The workaround is to add an entry for Mountain Lion or Mavericks (whichever is applicable) to the four installation script files.

After unzipping the client you will be left with a file named naclient.pkg?—?if you right click this -> Show Package Contents -> Contents -> Resources you will see the four scripts:

postinstall
postupgrade
preinstall
preupgrade

The relevant section in each file looks like this:

11)
 LEOPARD_MACOSX=1
 SNOW_LEOPARD=1
 LION_OSX=1
 TAPDIR=$DIR/10.4/$ARCH
 ;;
12)
 LEOPARD_MACOSX=1
 SNOW_LEOPARD=1
 LION_OSX=1
 TAPDIR=$DIR/10.4/$ARCH
 ;;

Mountain Lion also returns a version number of ‘12’, so simply adding a line to 12) will resolve the problem:

12)
 LEOPARD_MACOSX=1
 SNOW_LEOPARD=1
 LION_OSX=1
 MOUNTAIN_LION_OSX=1
 TAPDIR=$DIR/10.4/$ARCH
 ;;

Mavericks returns a version number of ‘13’, so requires a separate section:

13)
 
 LEOPARD_MACOSX=1
 SNOW_LEOPARD=1
 LION_OSX=1
 MOUNTAIN_LION_OSX=1
 MAVERICKS_OSX=1
 TAPDIR=$DIR/10.4/$ARCH
 ;;

The installation will then complete successfully.

VMware did integrate this fix into vCNS 5.1.2, but the fix didn’t make it into 5.5.0. The good news is that they have confirmed it is being integrated into the upcoming release?—?5.5.1.