===== About: =====

Coondog is a tool for configuring and controlling IPSec VPNs. It is 
not meant for advanced VPN use, as not all options and combinations of
options are available. I have tried to make the application as easy to
use as possibly, sacrificing flexibility as a result. If you need more
flexibility, you probably don’t need a GUI.

Coondog will work on most GNU/Linux Desktop environments which 
supports GTK applications.

You may notice a similarity between Coondog and another VPN tool for 
Mac OS X: IPSecuritas. This is purely intentional, The folk(s) at 
Lobotomo Software did a great job and I thought I would model Coondog
after theirs.

The underlying system is the Racoon IKE daemon and setkey for 
manipulating the IPSec policies in the kernel. There are two programs:

  * coondog.pl - this script runs with user-level priviledges and 
  provides the GUI. With it the user creates/edits the VPN 
  configurations and controls which VPNs are active.
  * coondog-helper.pl - This script is called by coondog.pl. It runs 
  SUID root and is used to run Racoon and setkey and do do other tasks
  that require root priviledges.

===== Features: =====
  * All configuration files reside in the home directory of the user 
  running Coondog.
  * Separation into Coondog and Coondog-helper means that the GUI does
  not need to be run with root priviledges.
  * Multiple VPNs can be configured, but only those that are selected 
  will be started.
  * Coondog can be exited leaving the VPNs active. Coondog can then be
  run again to stop them.
  * Option to Force negotiation of a VPN as soon as IPSec is started.

===== Bugs: =====
  * Only one host/network policy per VPN.
  * No support for certificates yet. Only PSK authentication is 
  supported.
  * Method for VPN monitoring(optional) is poor and puts a heavy load
  on the system.

===== Requirements: =====
  * IPSec-tools (>= 0.6) [[http://ipsec-tools.sourceforge.net/]]
  * Perl (>= 5.8) - Earlier versions will probably work, they are just
  not tested. Also needs SUID support. For Debian this means the perl 
  and perl-suid packages.
  * Perl modules:
    * Gtk2(>= 1.0)
    * Gtk2::GladeXML(>= 1.003)
    * Config::General(>= 2.29)

Versions above are what were used in development and testing, you may 
have problems with earlier or later ones. Pleas file a bug report in 
this case.

  
Installing
----------
  1. Edit the following paths in coondog-helper.pl to reflect the 
     location of these programs in your system:
       $racoon_path
       $setkey_path
  2. Edit the following paths in coondog.pl to reflect the location 
     of these programs in your system:
       $ifconfig_path
       $route_path
  3. Edit Makefile to verify that the installation locations are ok 
     for your system.
  4. With root priviledges run: make install

 
Download
--------
The software can be downloaded from:
http://emeitner.f2o.org/coondog/

Author
------
Erik Meitner <emeitner@f2o.org>

License
-------
Coondog is licenced under the GPL, version 2.
 
 