Linux: using NetworkManager

When Linux is used as a desktop operating system, the network configuration is configured using the Linux NetworkManager in most of the cases. This package allows a non-root user to start and stop the network connections, connect and disconnect from wireless networks, and also to set up several types of VPN connections, including OpenVPN. In this recipe, we will show how to configure an OpenVPN connection using the GNOME variant of the NetworkManager.

Getting ready

Set up the client and server certificates using the first recipe from Chapter 2, Client-server IP-only Networks. For this recipe, the server computer was running CentOS 5 Linux and OpenVPN 2.1.1. The client was running Fedora 13 Linux and OpenVPN 2.1.1. This version of Linux comes with NetworkManager 0.8, including the NetworkManager-openvpn plugin. The NetworkManager-openvpn plugin is not installed by default and needs to be explicitly added to the system. This version is highly recommended when setting...