Client hangs when network changes (OS X)

[daniel72]

When I put my Macbook Pro to sleep while connected to one network and then use it again when connected to another, the Pulse Secure client often enters a hung state where it says "Waiting to connect" or "Connecting" but doesn't do anything else. Worse, I can't access anything on our corporate VPN while this is happening—not even if I shut down the Pulse client. The only solution I know of is to reboot the machine, which is extremely inconvenient.

Is there a way to make the Pulse client forget about its previous connection and convince it to reconnect using the new network? I like everything about this product besides this problem, but it's a huge annoyance. Thanks!

[ruc]

I have not heard of this issue before. I use a MAC and login from different networks several times each day and have not seen this issue. I used Pulse 5.1R5 on my Mac running yosemite.

What version of Pulse Mac Client are you running? Also has the administrator of the Pulse gateway device you are connecting to added any location awareness based rules that may be causing this issue?

[zanyterp]

Similar to Ruc, unfortunately, I do not see this.
When you look at the connection state, what does it loop on (connecting, name lookup [hostname not found])? Does this happen on the same network(s) all the time but not at all on other networks?

[daniel72]

Can you please tell me how to look at the connection state?

[daniel72]

Using 5.2, but I had the problem with 5.1 (that's why I upgraded, hoping it would fix it, but it didn't). Administrator says there are no location rules.

[daniel72]

Sorry for delay in replying—I had given up hope of seeing a response here! To answer your questions, there's no pattern I've observed about which networks it happens on. It's certainly happened on a lot of them. And the problem isn't restricted to switching from one network to a different one (though that's the most common case); sometimes I get a failure to reconnect to the same network. The key thing seems to be putting the Macbook to sleep (i.e. shutting the lid) without first exiting from the Pulse client altogether.

Can you tell me how to check the connection state? I occasionally see a window pop up with that kind of information, but have no idea how to get at it on demand. Usually it's cause for celebration when that window pops up, because it gives me an option to reuse the existing connection, which means I don't have to reboot my machine. But it only shows up perhaps 10% of the time this problem occurs.

[zanyterp]

To pull up the connection detail, go to the Pulse Secure icon in your menu bar (black circle with a stylized green & white S). Once the UI loads, click on the connection and hit ⌘-D to see real-time (if you enable the option at the bottom to automatically refresh) statistics of the connection (network error, waiting for xxxxxx, connected, and other status updates).

[daniel72]

Ok I had the problem again just now, and it says "this session is not connected. connection source: user-added". Does that make sense?

[daniel72]

Can I please get some help with this? This problem is costing me a ridiculous amount of time (I just had to reboot my machine to use the network at all) and your product really ought not to be doing this.

Sometimes I get a dialog box telling me that Pulse is already connected and asking if I want to reuse the existing connection. (Sometimes, like now, I even get that after rebooting, which seems bizarre. Why is Pulse holding onto my network across reboots?) If you could even tell me how to bring up that dialog box, I could manually reuse the existing connection when I need to change the network. Is there a way to do that? Otherwise I have to wait for up to 10 minutes hoping it will show up on its own, until I give up in frustration and reboot.

[daniel72]

If anyone is still reading this, here is a screenshot of a message box that sometimes (but only sometimes) appears, which allows me to solve the problem quickly: https://imgur.com/M9eay0X.

Is there a way to get the client to show me this list of sessions so I can tell it I want to connect? If so, then I wouldn't have to wait several minutes or reboot my machine often.

I'd really appreciate you guys' help with this, because it's a problem that comes up for me nearly every day, and when it happens it's quite inconvenient.