Comment 4 for bug 280428

I agree, and I realized that the problem persists for users upgrading to Intrepid and using OpenVPN (I mean, the behaviour has not been changed yet): I upgraded from Hardy to Intrepid on another machine and had to remove OpenVPN from the autostarted-at-boot apps list. I also realized, while still using Hardy, that VPN autostart authentication at boot-up just silently fails (and this might be a better policy, from an average user's perspective, I believe).