FortiClient config daemon failing

[pablob]

Hello,

I have two different laptops running Debian 12, and in one of them  FortiClient stopped working (it was working before, and it is not clear what changed).

When I start the GUI, I get the dreaded "blank" window (with just a menu with the options to quit and help).

If I try to do anything with the CLI, I get errors to the tune that "No configuration data was returned".

Investigating a bit, it seems that the "confighandler" process runs a local HTTP server, and the tools connect to it to get configuration data. However, in the computer with FortiClient issues, this server seems to not respond and close connections without delivering any data.

I have tried purging and installing all 7.2.x versions available in the Fortinet repositories (both Debian and Ubuntu), and even the latest 7.4 from the Debian repo. All of them fail in the same way (7.2.0 is different in the sense that it keeps retrying, while all others seem to give up at the first failure to connect to the config server). I have removed all the configuration directory before re-installing and rebooted. Nothing seems to change the behaviour.

Any help to fix that would be really appreciated, since that computer is functionally isolated now from the data I have behind the VPN.

Thanks!

Pablo B.