Through the Network Manager indicator nm-applet (the GNOME or Unity network tray applet installed by default), you can configure NetworkManager to automatically connect to a VPN when a network is connected.

1. Click on the network tray applet and click "Edit connections...", or run nm-connection-editor.


2. Select a network connection and click "Edit..."


3. Check "Automatically connect to VPN when using this connection" and select the desired VPN in the drop-down list.


4. Save.

When this is enabled, there is a bug in NetworkManager that can break the "automatically connect to this network" function. (Edit: this bug has now been marked as "fix released" in Ubuntu 16.04). If NetworkManager tries to automatically connect and fails, you will see a line like the following in /var/log/syslog:

<error> [1401130450.367538] [nm-vpn-connection.c:1374] get_secrets_cb(): Failed to request VPN secrets #2: (6) No agents were available for this request.

It seems that NetworkManager fails to obtain the user's VPN password from gnome-keyring-daemon. One workaround is to let NetworkManager store the password in plaintext in the configuration file in /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/. To do this:

1. Open a terminal.


2. sudoedit /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/<VPN>, where <VPN> is the configuration file for your VPN (the filename is usually the name you assigned to your VPN).


3. Change the line password-flags=1 to password-flags=0


4. Save and exit.

NetworkManager will now store the VPN password itself (see man nm-settings for details), and the network autoconnect will work once again.