(I have searched for nm-applet not showing in Unity, and tried various fixes suggested, but now I have given up and am looking for a work-around...)

I am running Natty 11.4, and I have the Network Manager applet running fine in my main (admin) account. I use it to connect to a wireless network and run a VPN connection on that. The problem is this:

I have set up a non-admin account for other uses. I use user switching to go between the accounts. The non-admin account does NOT show the NM applet. This is not a problem at first when I switch to that account - if I am connected in my main, admin account, and switch to the non-admin account, I am still connected, the VPN is running, all is good.

But the VPN regularly bombs out every hour or so. And when that happens, I don't know how to re-start it, since there is no nm applet. I've tried running nm-applet but it says the service is already running. I don't know how to run other (sudo) commands from that non-admin account, since it is not an admin account, so the password does not give me access. So I have given up on solving that for now.

What I have been doing is switching accounts to get back to the admin account, restarting the VPN connection, then switching back... but I know there is a more intelligent way to do this, even if I can't ever get the nm applet running in the other account.

Thanks for any help.