Comments on: Ubuntu 9.10: network-manager – openvpn – “vpn service failed to start”

By: Tom Haney

Tom Haney — Wed, 07 Jul 2010 20:50:40 +0000

I am on 10.4 using Witopia for a provider. The item from Russell Ianniello worked for me. Thanks Russell.

By: Russell Ianniello

Russell Ianniello — Thu, 20 May 2010 01:09:38 +0000

I couldn’t get this working. I fixed it (w/ Ubuntu 9.10) from :

- Unchecking the option “Available to all users”
- Enabling MPPE
- Check the option “Connect automatically”

Hope this helps.

By: David

David — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 19:22:36 +0000

I found that this was a problem because my Gnome keyring did not have a password. When I deleted the file ~/.gnome2/keyrings/default* (really moved them somewhere else) and recreated my Gnome keyring with a password, then I was able to make a VPN connection with no problem

By: Stewart

Stewart — Wed, 17 Feb 2010 19:34:44 +0000

I have been having the same problem sinse 9.04

I am now running 9.10 and fiddling around have discovered that the following function fixes the problem If you run.:

sudo service openvpn restart

I can connect to my work VPN.
This is more than likely due to the vpn service either not starting on bootup or starting before a required service.
I haven’t got round to checking this though, but when I do I will look into my /etc/rc.local (and related) directories to see boot orders.

I hope this provides some help!

Stewart

By: Clint R.

Clint R. — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 03:40:16 +0000

None of the solutions posted here are working for me. I think its a permissions issue, but not sure how to solve it. I enabled root and logged in then imported my OVPN config file and it connected successfully. However when logging in via my user account I still received the same service failed to start error. I tried changing the permissions to /usr/sbin/service but still no luck. Any ideas what logs I might check to track down where the actual issu resides?

By: Tony Maro

Tony Maro — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 19:24:34 +0000

None of these fixes work for me. I’ve confirmed that a fake password on the key does not do anything. I’m betting the person who posted that it did, just happened to get one of the few times it would randomly connect.

I also tried the editing of interfaces (but please don’t remove the entries already there as he suggests! You need the lo entry!) but it did nothing as well – perhaps only because I use wireless (as do most people using VPN clients from their laptops) and not eth0.

The only thing I have not done yet is create a new vpn keyset that uses a password.