This will be a bit of an ongoing thread. I had a pretty frustrating problem with the NetworkManager in Gnome (and KDE apparently) that was causing me to rip my hair out. The solution I eventually found was buried so deep in forums that it took me quite a while to get to it.

I use PPTP a lot. The company I work for uses it almost exclusively. The main reason being that its simple. Every OS supports it now and it has minimal hassle to get it up and running… Or at least its supposed to be minimal hassle.

In Windows its as easy as creating a new dialup connection. Its supposed to be that easy in Linux, but there are some strange circumstances that mean it is not.

In Ubuntu I have been getting very frustrated. The rule of thumb is that you left click on the Network Manager icon in your notification area and get a menu upon which is the VPN stuff. However, when I did that, all I got was “Manual configuration” and nothing else. Extremely annoying.

However, it turns out that to resolve this you make a quick edit to a single file, restart the Network Manager and you’re away and laughing. At least it worked for me.

In Gnome, press Alt-F2 on your keyboard to bring up the Run dialog. In the run dialog type in

gksu gedit /etc/network/interfaces

And then click the run button.

After you’ve entered in your password, this will present you with a file that contains the default configuration settings for your network cards. However, having a configuration in here screws with Network Manager for some reason. It wants us all to be good little network users and get those details on the fly.

Anything in this file that starts with # is a comment. So you can ignore those lines. However, remove all other lines except the following two.

auto lo

iface lo inet loopback

When all thats in your interfaces file is the above to lines and whatever comments are in there, save the file and close the editor. Now press Alt-F2 again to load the run dialog and this time type in

gksu killall NetworkManager

Then click run again. The network manager icon should now vanish from your notification area on your panel. So we kind of want that back for some reason. So press Alt-F2 again and this time type in

gksu NetworkManager &

The Network Manager icon should apppear in the notification area of your panel once again.

Now left click on the icon and you should have a menu option listed as “VPN Connections”

Thats it. You’ll need the VPN settings from your administrator, but you can now create the VPN connection and use the Network Manager to connect/disconnect from your VPN.

If you have any questions, please let me know and I’ll answer them to the best of my abilities. If this doesn’t work for you, also let me know and I’ll see what I can do to help. And if you have any other questions that you can’t find answers for, feel free to ask and I’ll try to provide the answer you need.