The 2.6 kernel included with Mandrake 10.x contains a native IPsec implementation (26sec). FreeS/WAN 2.04 is included with Mandrake 10.0 and FreeS/WAN 2.06 is included with Mandrake 10.1. Openswan RPMs are available in the Mandrake Cooker / contrib directory.
The stock kernels included with Mandrake 9.x contain FreeS/WAN and the X.509 patch. This should in theory be sufficient to get you started. In practice however, there are some problems. The current kernel for Mandrake 9.2 at the time of this writing is kernel-2.4.22.28mdk. Unfortunately that kernel contains FreeS/WAN 1.99.8 but the userland utilities are FreeS/WAN 2.01 (freeswan-2.01-1mdk.i586.rpm), so there is a mismatch and it will not work. One solution to this problem might be to compile and install the Openswan userland RPMs from Mandrake Cooker. Mandrake 9.1's kernels for x86 are broken (kernel-2.4.21.0.13mdk...0.19mdk). There is a workaround, however. Kernel-2.4.21.0.24mdk for x86 is OK. And Mandrake 9.1's kernels for PowerPC are also OK. The current kernel for Mandrake 9.1 at the time of this writing is kernel-2.4.21.0.28mdk. That kernel contains FreeS/WAN 2.00 but unfortunately the userland utilities are still FreeS/WAN 1.99, so it does not work. Mandrake 9.0 uses a fairly old version of the X.509 patch (be sure to avoid using special characters in certificate names!).
Mandrake 8.1 and 8.2 contain older versions of FreeS/WAN without the X.509 patch. That means you should either upgrade your kernel or upgrade your Mandrake. Upgrading to a more recent Mandrake version is highly recommended.
The following URL is a small howto for Mandrake Systems. It is relatively easy to setup for Mandrake 9.0, 9.1, 9.2. It also works for Mandrake 10.0 with freeswan2.
