remove vpn menu from the applet if no vpn plugin is installed

[Ross Peoples]

Binary package hint: network-manager

Ubuntu Intrepid Alpha 6
NetworkManager 0.7.0

By default, the Add button in the VPN tab is disabled if OpenVPN and other packages are not installed. Instead of disabling the Add button, perhaps it would be better to ask the user if he/she would like NM to install the needed packages automatically. Kind of like how the codec manager works for media files.

I'm guessing this should belong in the Wishlist category, but I found no way of marking at such, so I apologize if this shows up on the wrong mailing list.

[David Prieto (frandavid100-gmail)]

I was about to file the same suggestion. Showing a "VPN connections" section but not being able to do anything from it is confusing and not very useful all around.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

i think we should fix the applet to not display those as there is no distribution independent way to install plugin packages. However, if you want please open a new bug that asks the vpn packages to be recommended by network-manager. in that way you usually would get it installed when running apt-get install network-manager. However, to get this on CD we have to be sure that those packages are supported upstreawm and then we have to make them first class citizens in ubuntu by promoting them to main.

[max (maxozilla)]

I have also found this problem very confusing. This bug needs to be fixed immediately. For most users, it currently appears that VPN is broken in Ubuntu. The user should be prompted to install the package network-manager-openvpn . This needs to be fixed immediately.

[Matthew East (mdke)]

This is more than a wishlist bug. I've been seriously confused for some time about why all the boxes under the VPN tab are greyed out and it won't let me do anything. This is even more so given that network-manager offers a "Configure VPN" button in its main interface in the panel.

If the plugin can't be shipped out of the box, what network-manager should do is offer to install the relevant plugin (which I understand to be network-manager-vpnc) when a user tries to "Configure VPN", just like totem does for codecs or other applications do for essential packages. Alternatively, as suggested, this should be hidden.

I'd recommend that the priority of this bug be increased.