How do we import L2TP VPN profiles?

[leftyfb]

Now that you've removed the import feature, how do we import L2TP profiles? You mention "didn't provide anything that the saved connections stored in /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections did not provide.".

If this is saying we can just copy conf files directly to the system-connections directory, we still need to generate unique UUID's for those connections. Is there documentation somewhere on how to do this?

Or, if there's another way to import/create L2TP VPN profiles from the command-line, can you link to documentation for it?

https://github.com/nm-l2tp/NetworkManager-l2tp/commit/375bfb8ab6a37461224bd81d2df3581f298cb943#diff-ba222b3b8656f7bd1ab7b0fba8a483e9R95

[dkosovic]

If a profile is copied into /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/, a corresponding UUID connection will be generated once NetworkManager is restarted. I believe the following should do it on most linux distros.

sudo systemctl restart NetworkManager.service

Alternatively, If you are configuring a VPN conection for a headless server, as long as it has the GNOME dependencies installed (the server doesn't need to have a X11 server installed, only the client does) you can use X11 SSH tunnelling, e.g.:

ssh -X username@vpn-server-hostname
nm-connection-editor

[dkosovic]

My suggestion of restarting the NetworkManager service to detect new VPN connection profile files or changes to those files might be a little too drastic, the following should be enough:

sudo nmcli con reload

Extract from:

• https://developer.gnome.org/NetworkManager/stable/nm-settings-keyfile.html

Users can create or modify the keyfile connection files manually, even if that is not the recommended way of managing the profiles. However, if they choose to do that, they must inform NetworkManager about their changes (see monitor-connection-file in nm-settings(5) and nmcli con (re)load).