SonicWall NetExtender hangs on Connecting to tunnel

After trying several different methods of fixing, none working, I finally came across a forum post on the Gentoo forums about the same issue. It seems that the issue is that some files are named incorrectly and so a symbolic link needs to be created in order to successfully connect. Link to thread.

To create a symbolic link to connect with NetExtender successfully you need to:

cd /etc/ppp/ip-up.d
ln -s sslvpnroute sslvpnroute.sh

This should allow you to get past the Connecting to tunnel... part. Once connected, NetExtender will create a file called sslvpnroutecleanup. You also need to link this file, so

cd /etc/ppp/ip-down.d
ln -s sslvpnroutecleanup sslvpnroutecleanup.sh

Note, you can only do that once you're successfully connected to the route. These steps fixed the issue for me.

When NetExtender is installed, it patches ppp configuration files. The patches are distribution specific. When ppp is updated by the distribution, the original configuration is restored. After that, NetExtender stops working exactly with those symptoms (stopping at Connecting tunnel...). The solution is to reinstall NetExtender.