Comment 19 for bug 449326

I'm still experiencing this problem on 9.10 with all updates installed.

before I can connect to VPN through the nm-applet I have to manually run:

#sudo /etc/init.d/openvpn start

#sudo openvpn -C myvpn.conf connects me too.

So I don't know to what it's related, but I read on the unbuntu forums it could be fixed with a change to the openvpninitscript by addding a 'sleep 3' timout somewhere.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=63967&postcount=6

hope this helps