Bug 1403227

NetworkManager does not handle ovpn files, except it supports to import/export them. Import/export means, to read/write a ovpn file and create a NetworkManager connection. The latter is stored in keyfile format (not ovpn!) in /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections.

If GRU2.ovpn is in keyfile format, it is expected that you cannot import it via VPM import functionality. 


Preferably, we would have an import function for keyfile format as well (for which there exists an RFE). For now, drop the file to /etc/NetworkManager/system-connection, 
  
  chmod 600 $FILE
  chown root:root $FILE
  nmcli connection load $FILE
or
  nmcli connection reload

> 2. systemctl restart NetworkManager

Sidenote: restarting NetworkManager is almost always not the thing you want. What did you want to achieve?

Hi Thomas,
thanks for your post, can you share a link to the RFE? Or mark this bz as duplicate? I'd really like to see NM being able to handle (import/export) the format it actually uses for its own configs.
Moving around config files manually is not really user-friendly.

The reason for doing systemctl restart NetworkManager was to make NM aware that the GRU2.ovpn file is gone from /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections. There's probably a more elegant way to do that.

ah, I see it's ~only~ upstream (note that all development is done upstream-first, so the upstream bug is almost just as good. OK: the downstream bug adds pressure to fix it, so it serves a purpose).


I change the subject to something specific:
  [RFE] support import/export of NetworkManager's keyfile format in nmcli


But there are really many aspects to this:

 - libnm internally already supports keyfile format. It should become public API
 - nmcli (using libnm) should implement this import/export.
     https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=744702
 - nmcli should allow offline-use, that is without NetworkManager. E.g. to
   directly write the keyfile. Or even better: just print it to stdout, and 
   allow the user to build on that using shell. E.g.
      nmcli connection export --stdout $CONN_NAME > \
          /etc/NetworkManager/system-connection/new 
   or
      nmcli connection add --stdout type ethernet ... > \
          /etc/NetworkManager/system-connection/new
      https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=744700
 - leverage import/export from nm-connection-editor.
 - In Gnome/KDE, associate a file extension (.nm-keyfile?) with nm-connection-
   editor to import the keyfile on double-click.

 - maybe: same for other file formats, most prominently ifcfg-rh.

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