I'm running Kubuntu 10.10 and I have a couple of VPN's set up. I click on the network icon in my system tray, and a window pops up that lists my two VPN's under "Connections". I used to be able to click the icon next to the network to sign on to the VPN, but I cannot find any evidence that the buttons do anything anymore. I have tried checking the files under /var/log, but I cannot find anything relevant there. It used to at least show me what it was doing under the Virtual Private Network heading, even if my connection attempt failed, but there is no longer any visual indication that anything happens either.

Any help would be well appreciated. At this point, I would be happy with a connection failed message.

Try recreating your VPN connections. In addition, also ensure that the appropriate KDE Network Management and NetworkManager plugins are installed.

I've deleted and created the VPN connections again. I have the Network Management plasma widget installed, along with plugins for pptp, openvpn and vpnc. It looks like I have everything necessary installed. There is another KDE system tray applet Network Manager, but I can't even get the interface to start up. I even applied all the updates, rebooted and reinstalled the plasma widget.

The KDE System Tray application (knetworkmanager) can be removed (not the Plasma Applet). Once you have disabled it, please logout and back in again, to ensure that the Plasma Applet is managing the networks.

If it isn't functioning, check the content of ~/.xsession-errors and /var/log/NetworkManager to see if there is any reason as to why it is not working.

Kubuntu will only let me install one of them at a time. I must remove the plasma applet to install knetworkmanager and vice versa. I don't have a /var/log/NetworkManager to examine for errors and nothing of the error was getting logged in /var/log. The file ~/.xsession-errors has thousands of lines and it's a lot slower to decipher than other log files I've looked at. I wasn't able to find anything notable in there related to my problem.

After several reboots, a few removals and reinstalls, and a shutdown or two, the buttons started working on their own again. I'm guessing it's some sort of hard to trigger bug with the network management getting permanently locked, and it probably didn't help that my VPN settings weren't correct to begin with. As long as it is working, I have more pressing problems to deal with. Thank you kindly for your help.