As I setup my laptop with Ubuntu 13.04, I did several things to configure my networking needs. This article attempts to document my setup.
If you want to see all of my setup, please checkout my Ubuntu 13.04 Install page.
Month: June 2013
Duplicate Photos
I just restored my pictures directory from my backup onto my new Ubuntu 13.04 installation. It is almost 50G! The sad part is that I know there are many duplicate pictures in the directory for various reasons.
So, I decided to go on a trek to see if I could get rid of the duplicates. Here’s my explore:
Fixing the VPN on Ubuntu 13.04
None my VPNs have worked since I installed Ubuntu 13.04. Something is missing for some reason. I found a couple posts that gave some clues, so I thought I would take notes as I walked through it.
The Symptoms
First, when I try to connect, I got an error message about VPN secrets: “VPN Connection Failed: The VPN connection ‘<connection name>’ failed because there were no valid VPN secrets.”
Then, when I tried to configure it, I got this message: “Could not edit connection: Could not find VPN plugin service for ‘org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.pptp’.”
Troubleshooting
I found someone who did some troubleshooting on the Arch Linux Forums. I thought it would be a good attempt to try to figure out if the same thing was happening to me.
First, just out of curiousity, I wanted to see what process instance and what parameters were being used for Network Manager. Here’s the process:
skp@pecan:~$ ps -ef | grep -i networkmanager root 1157 1 0 Jun02 ? 00:00:05 NetworkManager root 1847 1157 0 Jun02 ? 00:00:00 /sbin/dhclient -d -sf /usr/lib/NetworkManager/nm-dhcp-client.action -pf /run/sendsigs.omit.d/network-manager.dhclient-wlan0.pid -lf /var/lib/NetworkManager/dhclient-a01df2ba-ec6b-4524-bf12-00ca1a01b65b-wlan0.lease -cf /var/lib/NetworkManager/dhclient-wlan0.conf wlan0 nobody 2010 1157 0 Jun02 ? 00:00:01 /usr/sbin/dnsmasq --no-resolv --keep-in-foreground --no-hosts --bind-interfaces --pid-file=/var/run/NetworkManager/dnsmasq.pid --listen-address=127.0.1.1 --conf-file=/var/run/NetworkManager/dnsmasq.conf --cache-size=0 --proxy-dnssec --enable-dbus=org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.dnsmasq --conf-dir=/etc/NetworkManager/dnsmasq.d skp 14082 11788 0 08:44 pts/1 00:00:00 grep --color=auto -i networkmanager
Then, I stopped the service with “service network-manager stop”:
skp@pecan:~$ sudo service network-manager stop network-manager stop/waiting skp@pecan:~$ ps -ef | grep -i networkmanager nobody 2010 1 0 Jun02 ? 00:00:01 /usr/sbin/dnsmasq --no-resolv --keep-in-foreground --no-hosts --bind-interfaces --pid-file=/var/run/NetworkManager/dnsmasq.pid --listen-address=127.0.1.1 --conf-file=/var/run/NetworkManager/dnsmasq.conf --cache-size=0 --proxy-dnssec --enable-dbus=org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.dnsmasq --conf-dir=/etc/NetworkManager/dnsmasq.d skp 14217 11788 0 08:52 pts/1 00:00:00 grep --color=auto -i networkmanager
Then, I found the UUID of my VPN connection with this command:
skp@pecan:~$ sudo cat /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/<Wireless SID redacted> | grep uuid <em id="__mceDel">uuid=1a31c85c-2808-4bae-8651-2c618f8972e8
Finally, I started Network Manager with debugging enabled like this:
NM_SERIAL_DEBUG=3 NetworkManager --no-daemon 2>&1 | tee /tmp/nmserial.txt
When I try to connect to the VPN, I get this in the debug log:
NetworkManager[14317]: <info> Starting VPN service 'pptp'... NetworkManager[14317]: <info> VPN service 'pptp' started (org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.pptp), PID 15299 NetworkManager[14317]: <info> VPN service 'pptp' appeared; activating connections NetworkManager[14317]: <error> [1370269072.212221] [nm-vpn-connection.c:1374] get_secrets_cb(): Failed to request VPN secrets #2: (6) No agents were available for this request. NetworkManager[14317]: <info> Policy set '<Wireless SID redacted>' (wlan0) as default for IPv4 routing and DNS. NetworkManager[14317]: <info> VPN service 'pptp' disappeared
Reinstalling
I copied the /etc/NetworkManager/VPN directory when I restored my backups. Looking back, I shouldn’t have done that.
So, I decided to see what package those files belong to:
skp@pecan:/etc/NetworkManager/VPN$ dpkg -S /etc/NetworkManager/VPN/nm-pptp-service.name network-manager-pptp: /etc/NetworkManager/VPN/nm-pptp-service.name
To get all of the files, I did this:
skp@pecan:/etc/NetworkManager/VPN$ for f in `ls /etc/NetworkManager/VPN/*`; do dpkg -S $f ; done network-manager-iodine: /etc/NetworkManager/VPN/nm-iodine-service.name network-manager-openconnect: /etc/NetworkManager/VPN/nm-openconnect-service.name network-manager-openvpn: /etc/NetworkManager/VPN/nm-openvpn-service.name network-manager-pptp: /etc/NetworkManager/VPN/nm-pptp-service.name network-manager-strongswan: /etc/NetworkManager/VPN/nm-strongswan-service.name network-manager-vpnc: /etc/NetworkManager/VPN/nm-vpnc-service.name
So, I deleted (or moved) those files and reinstalled the packages:
skp@pecan:/etc/NetworkManager/VPN$ mkdir $HOME/Downloads/VPN skp@pecan:/etc/NetworkManager/VPN$ sudo mv /etc/NetworkManager/VPN/* $HOME/Downloads/VPN/ [sudo] password for skp:</pre> skp@pecan:~$ sudo apt-get install --reinstall network-manager-iodine network-manager-openconnect network-manager-openvpn network-manager-pptp network-manager-strongswan network-manager-vpnc [sudo] password for skp: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required: kde-l10n-engb wine-gecko1.9:i386 Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them. 0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 6 reinstalled, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 22.6 kB/120 kB of archives. After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used. Get:1 http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ raring/main network-manager-pptp amd64 0.9.6.0-0ubuntu2 [22.6 kB] Fetched 22.6 kB in 0s (78.3 kB/s) (Reading database ... 266755 files and directories currently installed.) Preparing to replace network-manager-iodine 0.0.3-1ubuntu2 (using .../network-manager-iodine_0.0.3-1ubuntu2_amd64.deb) ... Unpacking replacement network-manager-iodine ... Preparing to replace network-manager-openconnect 0.9.6.0-0ubuntu2 (using .../network-manager-openconnect_0.9.6.0-0ubuntu2_amd64.deb) ... Unpacking replacement network-manager-openconnect ... Preparing to replace network-manager-openvpn 0.9.6.0-0ubuntu3 (using .../network-manager-openvpn_0.9.6.0-0ubuntu3_amd64.deb) ... Unpacking replacement network-manager-openvpn ... Preparing to replace network-manager-pptp 0.9.6.0-0ubuntu2 (using .../network-manager-pptp_0.9.6.0-0ubuntu2_amd64.deb) ... Unpacking replacement network-manager-pptp ... Preparing to replace network-manager-vpnc 0.9.6.0-0ubuntu2 (using .../network-manager-vpnc_0.9.6.0-0ubuntu2_amd64.deb) ... Unpacking replacement network-manager-vpnc ... Preparing to replace network-manager-strongswan 1.3.0-0ubuntu1 (using .../network-manager-strongswan_1.3.0-0ubuntu1_amd64.deb) ... Unpacking replacement network-manager-strongswan ... Setting up network-manager-iodine (0.0.3-1ubuntu2) ... Setting up network-manager-openconnect (0.9.6.0-0ubuntu2) ... Setting up network-manager-openvpn (0.9.6.0-0ubuntu3) ... Setting up network-manager-pptp (0.9.6.0-0ubuntu2) ... Setting up network-manager-vpnc (0.9.6.0-0ubuntu2) ... Setting up network-manager-strongswan (1.3.0-0ubuntu1) ...
That didn’t seem to do the trick. The VPN directory was still empty and the VPN would not connect.
Completely Removing
So, I used the purge command to completely remove the VPN packages:
sudo apt-get purge network-manager-iodine \ network-manager-openconnect network-manager-openvpn network-manager-pptp network-manager-strongswan network-manager-vpnc
Then, I had to reinstall the packages back:
sudo apt-get install network-manager-iodine network-manager-openconnect \ network-manager-openconnect-gnome network-manager-openvpn \ network-manager-openvpn-gnome network-manager-strongswan \ network-manager-vpnc network-manager-vpnc-gnome
After that it worked!
What Was the Difference?
I compared the files and they were identical. The one thing that I noticed was different was the permissions on the files:
</pre> skp@pecan:~$ ls -l /etc/NetworkManager/VPN/ total 24 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 203 Apr 10 08:06 nm-iodine-service.name -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 252 Apr 10 08:00 nm-openconnect-service.name -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 264 Apr 10 10:13 nm-openvpn-service.name -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 248 Feb 26 04:26 nm-pptp-service.name -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 223 Jun 29 2012 nm-strongswan-service.name -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 248 Apr 10 10:08 nm-vpnc-service.name skp@pecan:~$ ls -l ~/Downloads/VPN total 72 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 203 Apr 10 08:06 nm-iodine-service.name -rw------- 1 root root 252 May 27 17:30 nm-openconnect-service.name -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 264 Apr 10 10:13 nm-openvpn-service.name -rw------- 1 root root 248 May 27 17:30 nm-pptp-service.name -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 223 Jun 29 2012 nm-strongswan-service.name -rw------- 1 root root 248 May 27 17:30 nm-vpnc-service.name
Conclusion
First, when restoring network connections from a backup, only restore the /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections directory. The VPN directory gets installed with the VPN packages.
Second, the fix was to completely remove the packages. I had to use the purge command. The reinstall option didn’t recreate the files that I was missing.
Finally, my problem was the permissions in the /etc/NetworkManager/VPN/* directory.