Forticlient VPN on macOS Big Sur M1

VPN
1

Hello everyone,

I have been searching through Fortinet’s guides and tried installing the Forticlient VPN on a macOS as said in the title.

Even with the special notices from the guides, I cannot find the services named “fctservctl” even on new installations, only “fctservctl2” and I have added this service, along with the “FortiClient” and “FortiClient Agent” to the “full disk access” on “security & Privacy” and still it always gets me a connection error where it cannot connet to the VPN.

I try the same connection with the same user in a windows pc and it works properly.

I’m wondering if I might be missing something along the way and if anyone could help me…

Regards everyone!

2

Hi,

macOS Big Sur (version 11) supports FortiClient 6.4.3 and FortiClient 7.0.0.

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If you are using the VPN-only client, you only need to grant permissions for fctservctl and FortiClient.

You may have to manually add fmon2 to the list, as it may not be in the list of applications to allow full disk access to. In System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Click the + icon to add an application. Browse to /Library/Application Support/Fortinet/FortiClient/bin/ and select fmon2.

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If it is still not working, please make sure that your home LAN subnet and Office LAN subnet are not one and the same.

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Thank you, Hopefully this helps.

3

Others have had luck using the iOS app on the M1 mac. If nothing works you could try that to bridge the time.

4

I have the version 7.0.0.0022 , it work fine with full tunnel but it dosen’t take the dns correctly. They alternate between the ones I get from the LAN and the VPN. I have to configure the correct dns manually before connecting, but it breaks the fqdn I use for connection as those DNS are not yet available until I connect, so I added the public IPs in my hosts file… It really is bothering.

5

Ugh. I have endless problems with Forticlient mac.

Same OS version, same silicon, same forticlient version, same install process. One mac connects to the VPN, the other fails.

I’ve yet to get the macs stable with forticlient.

6

Thank you for your reply,

As I said in the original coment, I have tried manually adding the services but in the library folder where I should find the it is missing the fctservctl (only showing fctservctl2) and also missing the fmon/fmon2.

As per the LAN configurations I know everything is correct because it has been done previousle and successfully…

7

Hello,

Thank you for your reply!

That is exacly what I am doing because I have tried it and had luck with it as well on another macOS Big Sur sistem

Hopefully this solves the issue but it shouldn’t be done this way I gess…

Once again, thank you.

8

God bless you. You solved my problem! Thank you m8

9

I had luck making a connection this way. Unable to using native MacOS client, iOS app on M1 worked.

10

I actually was able to correctly configure and maintain a good connection but only installing the forticlientvpn through the APP Store… spent almost a day trying to see if it was something I had done wrong…

11

Interesting. I’ll check that out. Thanks!