I'm using the f5 software connect to VPN, but errors out with TunnelServer already launched

Question

I'm using the BIG-IP f5 vpn client on my MacBookPro. Most of the time it works fine.

Sometimes when my VPN does not exit cleanly I can no longer connect to the VPN. No matter how many times I try to exit, disconnect, turn off my wireless network, or release the dhcp, close my laptop lid. Nothing works.

I get this error message

tunnel server already launched

The only way around this was to reboot my Mac. This has the major drawback of loosing all my open browsers, terminals, folders, applications, etc.

Is there any other way around this issue? So that I can retain all the things that I have opened and am in the middle of? I try not to reboot for weeks or months at a time.

Answer 1

ps alx | grep svpn | awk '{ print $2 }' | xargs kill -9

Is the generic solution. Here is the narrative on how I arrived at this solution.

From the BIG-IP f5 application log, you can only find this from the icon in the menu bar. I saw this line:

2018-06-15, 23:30:54:000, 1274, 1274, edge, 1, (0xfffffffe) EXCEPTION - TunnelService, TunnelServer already launched, pid, 1514

I went into my terminal and found this.

ps alx | grep 1514
    0  1514     1   0  31  0  3552740   4212 -      S      ??    0:22.36 /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/F5 SSL VPN Plugin.plugin/Contents/Helpers/svpn svpn
    0  1515  1514   0  31  0  2473600    328 -      S      ??    0:01.54 /Library/Internet Plug-Ins/F5 SSL VPN Plugin.plugin/Contents/Helpers/svpn svpn

Then I issued a kill, but it didn't take. Luckily a kill -9 worked just fine.

kill -9 1515 1514

So in the future I will be doing a

ps alx | grep svpn | awk '{ print $2 }' | xargs kill -9

This is the generic solution posted at the top.

Answer 2

To make this works for general cases, use the following:

1. Find the svpn process id: ps alx | grep svpn
2. On the result process ID use the kill command: kill -9 [the process id from the ps command]

This should solve the "TunnelServer already launched" error.