Installing Cisco ASDM on Linux

Cisco’s Adaptive Security Device Manager is a GUI tool for managing and configuring Cisco security appliances. It runs perfectly well under Linux, but can be a little tricky to get running. Today, I’ll show you how.

I am currently running the following:

• Fedora 22 Workstation w/ Gnome 3.16
• Oracle Java 8 (1.8.0_45)

Adding a Security Exception

The first thing we need to do is add a security exception for the ASA. Open up the Java Control Panel with the following command:

$ /usr/java/latest/bin/ControlPanel &

Click on the Security tab and then on the Edit Site List… button.

Once the Exception Site List window opens, click on Add and type in “https://” followed by the IP of your ASA and a trailing forward-slash. If you’ve configured ASDM to be available on a different port, you’ll need to specify that. For example, if your ASA has the IP address of 192.168.10.1 and you’ve configured ASDM to be on port 4430, you’d enter the following:

https://192.168.10.1:4430/

Click OK to close the Exception Site List window, then OK again to close the Java Control Panel.

Installing ASDM

Go back to your terminal window and enter the following command, replacing <SITE_ADDRESS> with the IP and port number, if changed, of your ASA:

$ javaws https://<SITE_ADDRESS>/admin/public/asdm.jnlp

Accept the security warnings and login to your ASA. ASDM will install itself and, if you have the Applications Menu extension turned on, you’ll find it under Java WebStart.