Description of problem: Attempt to create an OpenVPN configuration. Attempt to import an OpenVPN configuration file. The request is ignored, with no error/warning message. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): NetworkManager-0.7.0-0.5.svn3030.fc8 NetworkManager-openvpn-0.7.0-2.svn3047.fc8 NetworkManager-glib-0.7.0-0.5.svn3030.fc8 NetworkManager-gnome-0.7.0-0.5.svn3030.fc8 NetworkManager-vpnc-0.7.0-0.4.svn3030.fc8 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. In Gnome, click nm-applet tray icon 2. Select "VPN Connections" then "Configure VPN" 3. Click "Add" 4. Click "Forward" 5. Select "OpenVPN Client" and click "Forward" 6. Click "Import Saved Configuration" 7. Select an OpenVPN config file, and click "Open" 8. File selector closes, returns to "Create VPN Connection2 of 2" Actual results: No connection information filled into wizard. No warning/error message displayed. Expected results: Wizard text boxes should be filled in from the OpenVPN configuration file and/or a connection should be created that manages the specified OpenVPN config file and/or some form of warning/error message should be displayed saying why the file could not be processed.
You should note that the import feature will import ini-style files, not original OpenVPN configuration files! So you create the connection manually once and then export the file to reuse on other systems. Currently I do not have the time to write an import for OpenVPN config files by myself. But patches for this are really welcome. For a quick fix I will add a warning if the appropriate section in the ini file is not found so that users know that importing the OpenVPN config is not supported. I will leave this bug open until this is done.
Rather than NM inventing a new config format for each of the supported VPN systems, which in turn won't end up supporting all the options that the VPN clients support, it seems far better if NM simply record the filename of an existing config file in the format required by the underlying VPN system. That way, there's no need for "import" at all - the NM config is just the pre-existing filename. This saves a lot of hassle implementing NM, plus adds more features (i.e. anything the VPN system supports, not just the minimal info that NM has in the config GUI). The only argument against the above is how to initially create the VPN config file if you don't want to RTFM and use a text editor. I feel that the VPN system itself should provide the GUI for editing the config file in this case, either/both as a separate application, or perhaps as a widget to plug into NM or other GUI apps.
The NM applet stores the configuration in GConf and has to transmit it over dbus, so just using the config file is not an option here - by design. After all we do not want users to have to deal with any kind of config files. The import feature is meant to make lives easier for administrators for provisioning VPN access. The ini-style format was used for two reasons: 1. It was copied from the vpnc plugin and was already available 2. For ini files there is support in the toolkit right away while supporting the OpenVPN format would have needed quite some work for correct parsing.
Well, there's no need to parse the OpenVPN file format. All NM should be aware of is the filename, and run openvpn as: openvpn --config the_stored_filename Simple! Without this, the NM OpenVPN support will be completely useless for anybody who's already using OpenVPN and has configuration files they want to use, so no point implementing OpenVPN support in NM!
closed - this is not a bug and should be discussed upstream
Fedora is upstream for this application, isn't it?