32

I'm trying to add a VPN to my network, but the option is greyed out.

Screenshot of the greyed-out indicator

I installed network-manager-openvpn but still no luck. Editing my connection does not show any VPN settings or tabs.

I'd appreciate it if anyone could point me in the right direction!

EDIT: In case anyone else has this issue, the wording "Add A VPN Connection" is super misleading as it's telling you that you need to add a VPN connection, not that you are supposed to click to add one from there.

So select Edit Connections, Add, and then select your VPN from there.

5
  • 1
    Can you add one from Settings -- > Network and clicking the + icon? Oct 23, 2016 at 19:45
  • @AndroidDev Yes that works fine! Oct 23, 2016 at 19:52
  • Does anyone have clues why the entry shown in the image is disabled?
    – naktinis
    Nov 14, 2016 at 1:04
  • still greyed out? Same with "configure vpn" after having added a connection.
    – Christian
    Nov 28, 2016 at 14:08
  • Did you install network-manager-openvpn ?
    – Harmonic
    Aug 11, 2017 at 17:57

3 Answers 3

53

In case anyone else has this issue, the wording "Add A VPN Connection" is super misleading as it's telling you that you need to add a VPN connection, not that you are supposed to click to add one from there.

So select Edit Connections, Add, and then select your VPN from there.

2
  • 6
    Wow ... I consider myself a "power-user" but this had me googling for a while. Thank you!
    – grongor
    May 5, 2017 at 9:16
  • 5
    No amount of intelligence can save you from bad UI design
    – Nick T
    May 24, 2018 at 5:18
9

I recently set up VPN on Xubuntu 16.04 LTS for the first time. This is what I had to do:

sudo apt install openvpn
sudo apt install network-manager-openvpn-gnome 

I used network-manager-openvpn-gnome instead of network-manager-openvpn to get the option to import the VPN configuration files.

After that I could go to:

  1. Edit Connections at the bottom of the menu
  2. Click on the Add button on the next window
  3. Choose Connection type
  4. Import a saved VPN configuration

After that I was able to edit the VPN connection by

  1. Edit Connections... at the bottom of the menu
  2. Select the VPN connection I want to edit
  3. Click on the Edit button

1
  • Thanks, but I actually answered my own question before you posted :) Upvote because your answer will help anyone else who finds this page. Thanks!
    – Harmonic
    Apr 11, 2017 at 19:17
4

The easy way is using a command on terminal:

nm-connection-editor

nm-applet normally starts at login by the desktop session manager and does not need to be run manually.

In some versions of Ubuntu there were problems in the security policy.

To solve this you should edit the file 'org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.policy' on /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/

sudo -H gedit /usr/share/polkit-1/actions/org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.policy

And change this action:

<action id="org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.settings.modify.own">
.
.
.
<allow_inactive>no</allow_inactive>

to

<allow_inactive>yes</allow_inactive>

Then restart network-manager

sudo systemctl restart network-manager
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  • Strange -- I used the same settings on 20.04 using the Network Setting control control panel and yet "Add" remained greyed out. Just running nm-connection-editor worked!
    – MrMas
    Aug 27, 2020 at 18:48

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