Ubuntu
network-manager-applet package

gui should explain that vpn is not available

Bug #370210 reported by Martin Pool on 2009-05-01

This bug affects 2 people

Affects		Status	Importance	Assigned to	Milestone
	network-manager-applet (Ubuntu)	Triaged	Wishlist	Unassigned

Bug Description

Binary package hint: network-manager

Bug 278153 was originally about the fact that if the openvpn plugin is not installed, the VPN-related options in networkmanager are just grayed out (http://launchpadlibrarian.net/18218320/screenshot.png) with no indication of why, or what can be done to fix it. Bug 278153 is now about installing the plugins by default which is apparently difficult or controversial.

It looks like the GUI does now now whether the plugin is available or not, because it disables the options (rather than eg just crashing or erroring when you try to use them.)

So this bug could be fixed by displaying a label in that dialog saying "VPN support is not installed" as well as disabling the controls. It's not perfect but it would at least give people a clue what to do next.

Tags:

Revision history for this message

Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox) wrote on 2009-11-20:

Confirming, as it is indeed greyed out, and multiple other bug reports indicate this tends to be confusing to users.

I'm marking this as wishlist since it's not something "really broken", but rather an improvement we'd like to have to the software. There just needs to be some discussion with upstream as how to deal with implementing this.

I actually brought this up on the mailing list in the past (http://mail.gnome.org/archives/networkmanager-list/2009-June/msg00203.html), and it somehow slipped through the cracks of what I wanted to do.. I'll see if I can get around to get a draft patch ready over the weekend.

Changed in network-manager (Ubuntu):
status:	New → Triaged
importance:	Undecided → Wishlist

Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox) on 2009-11-21

Changed in network-manager (Ubuntu):
status:	Triaged → In Progress
assignee:	nobody → Matt Trudel (mathieu-tl)

Revision history for this message

Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox) wrote on 2011-02-15:

Resetting from In Progress -- nothing has been done to implement this, and now that -pptp is available by default, it's debatable whether there should be much done. However, I think the Add button list should maybe have a link to kickoff software-center or something else with proposed VPN plugins.

Changed in network-manager (Ubuntu):
status:	In Progress → Triaged

Revision history for this message

Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox) wrote on 2012-02-22:

Unassigning myself. A way to install the VPN plugins should probably be provided, but it's not something I can spend time on to land in Precise now, especially past Feature Freeze. I'll look into this after the Precise release in case something simple could be arranged.

Changed in network-manager (Ubuntu):
assignee:	Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (mathieu-tl) → nobody

Revision history for this message

Mathieu Trudel-Lapierre (cyphermox) wrote on 2012-02-22:

Tentatively marking bitesize. It's not *extremely* simple to fix, but it should just be a matter of rearranging the UI a bit to allow for a button or something to call PackageKit and provide a way to list and install the right packages.

tags:

added: bitesize

Thomas Hood (jdthood) on 2012-10-30

affects:

network-manager (Ubuntu) → network-manager-applet (Ubuntu)

Revision history for this message

Rick Timmis (rick-timmis) wrote on 2013-12-07:

Network Manager VPN Chooser dialogue Edit (121.3 KiB, image/jpeg)

In looking to attempt a fix of this Bug, with the hope of working to apply the fix suggested by Dan Williamns in the mailing list post from above, I have discovered the following :-

<snip>
Perhaps when there aren't any plugins, the list box could be grayed (or just gtk_widget_hide() and pack another widget in the same box) and we put a message there saying that no VPN software is installed, and a button for "Look for VPN software..." which
launches the appropriate package manager to find some. Sound OK?
</snip>

https://projects.gnome.org/NetworkManager/

As far I can tell from the project website, and changelogs no activity has taken place regarding this issue..

Looking at this in more depth, there is an interesting problem. Gnome uses packagekit to manage additional software, in an ideal world, I think it would make sense to call Gnome-PackageKit, which would provide a safe option for Upstream inclusion. However, Ubuntu does not provide Gnome-PackageKit by default. This means that we'd need to make an Ubuntu specific change to call Software Centre.

Following on Mathieu's point that PPTP is now included, and that the networkmanager "Choose Connection type" makes a statement about VPN Plugins (See Screenshot)

IMHO I propose that this bug be closed, with no further action required..