Trying to establish a PPTP VPN Connection via Gnome NetworkManager (Ubuntu 9.10) I encountered some problems. While the connection not establish I got the following lines in my syslog.

Feb  2 19:42:40 laptop NetworkManager: <info>  Starting VPN service 'org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.pptp'...
Feb  2 19:42:40 laptop NetworkManager: <info>  VPN service 'org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.pptp' started (org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.pptp), PID 3597
Feb  2 19:42:40 laptop NetworkManager: <info>  VPN service 'org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.pptp' just appeared, activating connections
Feb  2 19:42:40 laptop NetworkManager: <info>  VPN plugin state changed: 1
Feb  2 19:42:40 laptop NetworkManager: <info>  VPN plugin state changed: 3
Feb  2 19:42:40 laptop NetworkManager: <info>  VPN connection 'connection1' (Connect) reply received.
Feb  2 19:42:40 laptop NetworkManager: <WARN>  nm_vpn_connection_connect_cb(): VPN connection 'connection1' failed to connect: 'No VPN secrets!'.
Feb  2 19:42:40 laptop NetworkManager: <WARN>  connection_state_changed(): Could not process the request because no VPN connection was active.
Feb  2 19:42:40 laptop NetworkManager: <info>  (wlan0): writing resolv.conf to /sbin/resolvconf
Feb  2 19:42:40 laptop NetworkManager: <info>  Policy set 'Auto 3210 Phone WLAN SL' (wlan0) as default for routing and DNS.
Feb  2 19:42:53 laptop NetworkManager: <debug> [1265136173.002231] ensure_killed(): waiting for vpn service pid 3597 to exit
Feb  2 19:42:53 laptop NetworkManager: <debug> [1265136173.002390] ensure_killed(): vpn service pid 3597 cleaned up

When I googled for this problem I noticed that ,any people seems to have the same problem. Reading 1000s of forum articels I ever found the same solution : „This is a bug in gnome keyring applet. Leave the password empty when you create a connection and then the keyring applet will ask for the password and the connection will run“

But this solution seems not to work for me. While I’m nearly gone mad I found the trick :) :)


When you first create your VPN Connection settings YOU MUST NOT ENTER A PASSWORD. This means NOT ENTER ANYTHING IN THE PASSWORD FIELD when you add a connection. If you do so, AND ONLY THEN the gnome keyring app asks for the password. If you have already entered a password and then edit the connection settings – clearing the password – it will not ask for the password and you will get the above lines in your syslog.

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