Linux How-to: Switch from Network-Manager to WiCD + gopenvpn. AKA faster network connection at login and better VPN stability

[jessez 3]

This document pertains to RHEL 6 and its clones: Scientific Linux, Oracle Linux, PUIAS, CentOS and RosaServer 2012 (These are the clones I know about). This should probably also work on Fedora as well. Other distros: Here's some links to start with and you may have to build gopenvpn from source for any other distro AFAIK.

http://gopenvpn.sourceforge.net/ and http://sourceforge.net/projects/gopenvpn/?source=directory

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=18821

http://mirror.sifnt.net.au/linux/dists/jaunty/main/binary-i386/gopenvpn_0.6-0sifnt_i386.deb

1.) If you don't have them installed add the following repositories: EPEL and NUX.

Here are the links to add the repos:

http://fedora.uib.no/epel/6/i386/repoview/epel-release.html

http://li.nux.ro/download/nux/dextop/el6/x86_64/nux-dextop-release-0-2.el6.nux.noarch.rpm

2.) Use your favorite package manager (or yum or RPM) to install packages: wicd, wicd-common, and either of the two GUIs available: wicd-curses or wicd-gtk (from EPEL repo) and gopenvpn (from NUX repo).

Note: if you aren't sure about the WiCD GUI, the GTK version will be best for gnome/kde, however they don't conflict so you can install and try both (one at a time) to see what works best for you.

3.) Next, go to your services management utility. Stop network-manager and disable it. Find wicd in the list and enable it, and set it to start in runlevel 3 or 5 depending on when you have your other network services starting (network and wpa_supplicant); they all need to be starting at the same runlevel or you will get non-fatal error messages at boot.

4.) Place all of your AirVPN configuration files in /etc/openvpn and rename them so the filenames do not have spaces in them (very important). It is probably best to use either a - (dash) or _ (underscore) to take out the spaces.

5.) Open the Gnome menu editor (alacarte) or the KDE menu editor (kmenuedit) and set gopenvpn to start as root (sudo would be preferred, but as of right now, I can't get gopenvpn to not crash unless it is started as root: I will be working on this problem and post a fix as soon as I figure it out).

If you aren't using either of Gnome or KDE, you'll need to figure out how to start the app as (sudo or) root, or use something like: sudo /usr/sbin/openvpn --cd /etc/openvpn --daemon --script-security 2 --management-query-passwords --management-hold --management 127.0.0.1 40116 --config /etc/openvpn/{airvpn-config-filename-here}.ovpn

in the terminal to start a vpn connection manually.

6.) Reboot.

7.) WiCD will start automatically and put an icon in your system tray. Edit your wired or wireless connection to start automatically if you want it to, set a static IP and custom DNS servers if desired or leave it set for dhcp. If your router is set to deny pings, it will crash WiCD, so set WiCD to not test the connection with a ping after the connection is made ( Preferences - Advanced Settings tab - Wireless Interface section, uncheck the "ping static gateways after connecting to verify association" box.

7.) Set gopenvpn to start at login if desired, or start from the apps menu (In KDE for some reason it gets placed in the "Internet" section of the menu). Either way you'll end up with an icon in the system tray. Left clicking on the gopenvpn icon will give you the list of servers that you placed in /etc/openvpn.

That should be it. Enjoy a better network tool and a more stable connection to your wired/wireless network and VPN.

Note: You can remove the network-manager packages at this point (if you want - there is no harm in leaving them installed), except the glib one, which other packages seem to have deps on for some reason.

As usual, let me know about any glitches, oversights or screw-ups I made...lol

Best regards,

jz

[jessez 3]

Hi all,

I found one glitch already:

I posted:

7.) Set gopenvpn to start at login if desired, or start from the apps menu (In KDE for some reason it gets placed in the "Internet" section of the menu). Either way you'll end up with an icon in the system tray. Left clicking on the gopenvpn icon will give you the list of servers that you placed in /etc/openvpn.

Where I said left-clicking brings up the list of servers, it's actually a right-click. Left-click does nothing.

My apologies.

Best regards,

jz