How to install and set up forticlient IPSec VPN in Ubuntu 20.04?

Forticlient is not available through ubuntu repository. You can download (as of now 6.4 version) and install manually by executing below commands in terminal.

wget -c 'https://filestore.fortinet.com/forticlient/downloads/FortiClientFullVPNInstaller_6.4.0.0851.deb' 

sudo dpkg -i FortiClientFullVPNInstaller_6.4.0.0851.deb

Did you have problems using openfortivpn?

You can install it with:

sudo apt install openfortivpn

then run it from the terminal with:

sudo openfortivpn <host>:<port> -u<username>

I faced this problem recently. On Windows I used Fortinet VPN client but Ubuntu version of their client have no IPSec support (at time of writing this).

For those looking for Ubuntu/Linux Mint 20 VPN client to connect to FortiNET VPN using IPSec, IKEv1, PSK (pre-shared-key) and the extended authentication (XAUTH) with your account and password, I found vpnc the easiest to use via gnome gui. In my case strongswan gnome gui did not work. I think because it uses IKEv2 and I need IKEv1.

# install dependencies
sudo apt-get install vpnc vpnc-scripts network-manager-vpnc network-manager-vpnc-gnome

Note that in vpnc-gnome interface the group id is group name, pre-shared-key is group password. In the advanced tab, look in the windows version of (working) Fortinet VPN client what values are used for the encryption, NAT-traversal and DH group. The names are not identical but the values you should select are. In my case the default values from vpnc gui were not what I needed.

Here is the link of forticlient download page. downlaod from here. Download .deb package and install it using

sudo dpkg -i <debfile name>

On Ubuntu 20.04 I found the best method has been the one I used on my previous answer

And for using with forticlient vpn ipsec I found this very useful:

Instructions for configuration for Forticlient vpn ipsec