Re: nm & openvpn on debian squeeze lxde; gui = failing, cli works

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Tue, 2012-06-26 at 04:26 -0700, bitterpennies wrote:
> I usually use network-manager with openvpn-gnome plugin on debian squeeze
> gnome, no problems. I just reinstalled debian squeeze, this time with
> lxde, installed nm (no-recommends), and it works fine. I then installed
> openvpn-gnome plugin with it, and when i try to connect to it, it
> instantly notifies me, "cant connect openvpn, failed because there were no
> valid vpn secrets... (paraphrase)".
> I connected with openvpn in commandline to test, and it works fine. Any
> suggestions?

openvpn isn't very helpful when it comes to error reporting.  But here's
what you can do, as root:

1) killall -TERM nm-openvpn-service
2) nm-openvpn-service --debug --persist
3) start the VPN connection again

nm-openvpn-service is in different locations depending on your distro,
it might be /usr/libexec, /usr/lib/network-manager, or something like
that.  In any case, you'll get a ton of spew from it, and that can help
you figure out why it's not connecting.  Be careful to sanitize this for
private details though, since it may print out passwords.

Also, the output of NM from wherever syslog logs to in your distro would
be helpful, so we can figure out what the NM side thinks is going on.

Dan