Hi all, I did ask for help with this issue thinking that it might be down to me, at this thread http://www.kubuntuforums.net/showthread.php?62390

In the above linked thread I explain in more detail how it just doesn't connect, no error messages as such, it just hangs on "connecting" and the router lights don't flash continuously as they should do normally when such a connection is being attempted/established, so I can see that physically there is nothing going on.

I have tried using mint 14 Mate (on another machine) and it connects fine every time, it also connects every time on my Win 7 machine, so the VPN service itself is up & running fine.

Can anyone else duplicate this or has anyone had the same issue on the latest 4.10's ?
Should I report a bug here on this? or is this normal for a beta version Kubuntu 13.04 Beta 2 (my 1st beta install) ?

By what I can see in the log in the link you posted there must be something wrong with ConsoleKit configuration or if you are using systemd that may also be the problem. There are some issues between Plasma NM and systemd that I have not been able to debug yet. We will have a Solid meeting in a few days and then I will try to squash those systemd related problems. If you use systemd you can try doing what is written in the last to comments in http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-92 ... ement.html

I looked at the last 2 posts in that thread and I'm still unsure of exact workaround, if indeed there is one. I think all of the 'buntu's use Upstart by default now, if anyone has found a way around this issue I would be very grateful for your input.

But more importantly, in the thread you referenced on the gentoo forums, they seem to be talking about not seeing any network manager plasmoid at all, mine is working fine, in that it is showing and my wired eth0 connection is also showing and working fine, it's just not making the vpn connection at all, and since my op earlier I have gone through the process of installing Mint 14 KDE version only to see the same issue and that is using kDE 4.9x.

I strongly suspect that I will not be the only user noticing this over the next few weeks/months, as many people use pptp based vpn's.
btw, I have also tried the separate standalone gui app 'Kvpnc' and that does the same thing, no actual error messages output (without going into logs).

Anyway, thanks for your reply, I hope this will be noticed & fixed.

As part of the Ubuntu family, Kubuntu is very likely to be using Upstart still. You can check to see if you are using systemd by running "systemctl list-units". If this command does not exist, or lists nothing then you are not using systemd.

Indeed, I double checked and all the 'buntu's use Upstart by default. so nothing to do with systemd afaik

Got the same issue here, what's the cause of this problem? why I can't connect

I can't connect either on my Kubuntu 13.10 system, KDE 4.12.1. But i can connect on all my Macs.

I can SOMETIMES connect using vpnc through the terminal but often I just get a "vpnc: no response from target" error. Something's wrong with linux's cisco "stack" (or whatever you call it).

Can you please explain how it "fails to connect"? Does it timeout, or does the connection simply fail immediately / very quickly?
Also, please check the contents of the NetworkManager log (usually located at /var/log/NetworkManager) to see if it contains anything helpful.

Nothing really seems to happen when I click on the vpn connection through the system tray widget. If I set it to ask for password, a password prompt appears, I enter my password, but then nothing--no error message, no spinning progress indicator on the widget. I do not have the log file you indicated. I don't see any network related logs in the folder.

I can't get vpn to work from an Ubuntu 13.10 livecd either. I'll try some other distros, KDE and non-KDE, to see what happens.

Can you check to verify that the appropriate NetworkManager VPN plugins are installed?