Q: VPN not working after upgrading to Mavericks

Didn't work for me.  My last backup was Mar 18 so I don't know if that is why it didn't work.  Now when I try to login, I get an error message that says " VPN CONNECTION - An unrecoverable error occurred. Verify your settings and try reconnecting."  I verified settings and they are still the same as before for my login info.  So I think the files might not be correct of there is a missing element that I'm not sure of.  I did back up files so I can recover to Maverick if needed.

UPDATE:  Still not connecting but I got rid of that message but going to Terminal and entering sudo /usr/sbin/racoon

it work fine on my imac mid 2010, perhaps you have different hardware!!

Or I don't know what I'm doing!  I have the new iMac Late 2012

you can also use the software shimo 3.2.3 version 3065 beta, they have solved this problem it work.

i thin you have differnt hardware..

how do I get it?

just download the trial at :http://www.chungwasoft.com/shimo/

go to settings an check "get beta updates" and click search, you wil get the beta version 3065 and make a connection l2tp or openvpn as you like

Removing kern.ipc.maxsockbuf entry from /etc/sysctl.conf fixed my problem as well. Not sure where the settings came from. My wife's iMac did not have this file and VPN worked fine there. I'm an old sysAdmin and install many sysAdmin tools, but not on my wife's iMac so much. I've had my MacBook Pro since early 2008 and Leopard with all the OS upgrades since then (up to Mavericks), plus sysAdmin tools, OS X Server tools, utilities, WiFi scanners, Nortel VPN client (since removed), Cisco Anyconnect client (SSL), other attempts at using other VPN clients before Cisco IPSec arrived built-in, etc.  Any of those things could have tweeked /etc/sysctl.conf.

Apple Enterprise Support is aware of the problem and has no solution at this time.  If you do have it working then something is proke and you probably have no security on your VPN.

This is a real pain as I now have several hundred employees who can no longer do any work. Great job Apple, I mean really splendid!

The only solution right now is to timemachine back to 10.8/2.2.

What a mess, no wonder the OS upgrade is free, it's broken all over the place.

Aparently they have been working on the problem since it was first reported on Oct 30.

VPN works for me, via JAVA and firefox (Safari doesn't work).

But I cannot have iTunes on.

As soon as I start iTunes (accidentally to try and charge my iPhone) then it kills ALL internet. I have to quit iTunes (usually Force quit) and end VPN and then repeat the VPN login.

1. Removing kern.ipc.maxsockbuf entry from /etc/sysctl.conf fixed my problem as well.

2. In Preferences select iCloud  and uncheck back to my mac

3. Inside system preferences select share and unckeck all options

4. reboot and connect to VPN for my case it solve the trouble and now i can connect to VPN

/etc/sysctl.conf was depricated, if your upgrade was fully sucessfull this should not be there. The fact that it is means you are in the majority of ppl who are not fully running 10.9. Your running a large number of 10.8 utilities (Racoon being among them). If you do a clean install by making a Mavericks boot DVD and installing you will have a clean 10.9 with no 10.8 hanging around making things accidentally work.

I call it OSX Vista because so much of it doesnt work.

I was able to connect to network connect, but my connection kept dropping after few minutes and I was not able to access the internet until I switched off my VPN connections.

I had a spare router in my house which I hooked up to my default comcast router/modem. Then connected to my spare router and logged in to VPN. I have been connected for an hour now and my connection is stable.

Try this if you have a spare router. This seems to have solved my problem. Good Luck

Bob - a hundred employees?

I have spent weeks on this issue.

I did a clean install of Mavericks using an external USB Boot drive and then installed OS X server (fresh and clean).

I setup a VLAN which I am not sure I needed to do.

I setup DNS internally and opened ports via NAT.

I have my registered domain pointing to my Time Capsule's Public IP

I then setup VPN in a pretty standard way...nothing else turned on.

Locally I can connect both from my iPhone 5s and Brand New Mac Book Pro with Retina (Mavericks).

Outside, its a no go for either devices and with my son's older iPhone 4s.

I turned off Back to My Mac all over the place.

I even exported the config from the Time Capsule and removed any related entries and reimported.

I have rebooted so many times and done everything I can think of.

One issue that occurs is that when I go outside my local network, DNS seems to be messed up.

A simple:

sudo killall -HUP mDNSResponder

takes care of this for me and now I'm routed through the public DNS pointing to my Time Capsule's public IP.

Not sure how best to fix this or if it's just a new Mavericks bug?

Any advice out there as I'm just considering a clean install again which ends up taking me hours to do???

Thanks in advance!

I found this in another post, does it work?

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5468992?start=45&tstart=0

"I've the same issue and I investigate the problem. The reason why it does not work is, that the racoon (IKE Daemon) does not accept connections on port 4500 (IKE for NAT-T) if the source port is random generated.

Since Mavericks and IOS7 the source port from the client is no longer 4500, this lead to this problem (except you have a old VPN connection already setup bevor you update to IOS7 on your Phone).

If you are in the same network like your server, the IKE NAT-T is not used. In this case the regular port 500 (IKE) is used, and this works as expected. At the moment we have to wait if the problem is fixed by Apple.

There are two possibilities, they can adjust the clients or the server configuration. However if you want to use VPN with OS X native methods, use PPTP. This is not affected but of course it provides no Layer 2 Tunneling."