NetworkManager connection shortcut

Question

I proposed to implement this feature in http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/27164/, but it was marked as already implemented. Could someone shed light on how i can do it? I would like a shortcut to a specific connection (vpn or broadband) on my panel (one click connect).

Answer 1

You should be able to create shortcuts that call nmcli to bring up connections:

nmcli con up id "name of your connection"

Here's the result when I run this in a terminal on my system:

% nmcli con up id "PPTP VPN Testing"
Active connection state: activating
Active connection path: /org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/ActiveConnection/2
state: VPN connecting (3)
state: VPN connecting (getting IP configuration) (4)
Connection activated

Answer 2

NetworkManager has D-Bus interface, which you can use in other programs or scripts.

For example, I managed to connect one of my network-manager's VPN connections using this command:

 qdbus --system \
   org.freedesktop.NetworkManager \
   /org/freedesktop/NetworkManager \
   org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.ActivateConnection \ #-- this is a method
   org.freedesktop.NetworkManagerUserSettings \ #-- arg 1
   /org/freedesktop/NetworkManagerSettings/4 \ #-- arg 2
   /org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/1 \ #-- arg 3
   / #-- dumb arg 4 (needed for wifi only)

You can browse your D-Bus infrastructure with qdbusviewer tool from the qt4-dev-tools package. CLI-only qdbus is from libqt4-dbus.

NetworkManager's D-Bus API is documented here.

When you find your needed parameters (connection number, device number, etc), you could save the lines as a shell script and create a launcher on the panel to quickly access it.

Personally I don't bother and just do the two additinal clicks. After all, I'm not connecting to VPN too often to suffer from them.

Answer 3

I use cnetworkmanager with this python script for convenience. The script first starts LAN connection, then opens VPN.

#!/usr/bin/env python
import subprocess
import time
import sys

def getConnectionState():
  """Returns 'CONNECTED' or 'DISCONNECTED'
  """
  p = subprocess.Popen("cnetworkmanager --state", shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE)
  stdout = p.communicate()
  result = stdout[0].split('\n')[0]
  return result

def isConnected():
  return getConnectionState() == 'CONNECTED'

def connectEthernet(name='myethernet'):
  p = subprocess.Popen("cnetworkmanager --activate-connection=user,%s,," % name, shell=True, stdout=subprocess.PIPE, stderr=subprocess.PIPE)

def connectVPN(name='myvpn'):
  p = subprocess.Popen("cnetworkmanager --activate-connection=user,%s,eth0," % name, shell=True)

def timeout():
  while True:
    time.sleep(0.2)
    if isConnected():
      break

connectEthernet()
timeout()
connectVPN(sys.argv[1])