Tag Archives: nm-applet

Using TU-BAF VPN on Ubuntu with NetworkManager and VPNC

Using the VPN of the Technical University Bergakademie Freiberg on Ubuntu 14.04 and previous version can be really easy. Please check if you are running NetworkManager like you should by default.

Now install the network-manager-vpnc extension by:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y network-manager-vpnc

Using system settings > Network Connections, or the nm-applet (the small network icon in your task bar) > Edit Connections
you should be able to follow this images:ScreenshotNMApplet

ScreenshotAddVPNScreenshotAddVPN2Now set the empty fields to the values below, for user name, choose your default credential:

ScreenshotAddVPN3

click on Advanced button:ScreenshotAddVPN4

Now the VPN should start by clicking inside the nm-applet:

ScreenshotAddVPN5

Please also see the official pages (german):

http://tu-freiberg.de/urz-21
http://urz.tu-freiberg.de/urz/netze/vpn/index.html

Howto use CubieTruck and NetworkManager to do WPA2 Enterprise TLS

Last days the [amazon &title=CubieTruck&text=CubieTruck] made me struggle with its Network behavior. It continuously refused to connect to any WLAN, didn’t allow the Usage of the NetworkManager GUI, and confused me a lot.

Some things that might help you:

Wlan isn’t enabled by default – or at least it wasn’t for me.

Load the driver

modprobe bcmdhd

In case you don’t want to do that everytime the [amazon &title=CubieTruck&text=CubieTruck] needs wifi consider adding a new line with ‘bcmdhd’ (no quotes) to /etc/modules

I needed to install the linux firmware:

sudo apt-get install linux-firmware -y

and reboot

sudo reboot

3. bring the wlan0 device up and scan if your wlan is available

sudo -i #get root 
ifconfig wlan0 up
iwlist wlan0 scan

Check if the /etc/network/interfaces file looks something like that:

auto lo eth0
iface lo inet loopback

No additional lines, or the NetworkManager will struggle with your devices, showing them as “not managed” or “disconnected”.

So by default lubuntu 13.04 image, no Network manager has been running by boot, so I’ve fixed that by adding following line to my /etc/crontab:

@reboot /usr/sbin/NetworkManager

(sure there are other ways – especially because it’s a system service)

So after reboot – using the [amazon &title=CubieTruck&text=CubieTruck]-GUI its faces you with a “Network Manager not running”.

Screenshot[amazon &title=CubieTruck&text=CubieTruck]

So the small Icon on the taskbar isn’t able to find the network manager.
I could not fix that other than by opening an LXTerminal and:

sudo killall nm-applet && sudo nm-applet

which leads me to a nice WLAN GUI and made it possible to use WPA2 Enterprise with TLS 🙂