[SOLVED] How to disable VPN autostarting?

**Piraja** · September 14th, 2008

Dear all!

I recently installed Intrepid Ibex on my laptop. One of the few minor problems I've encountered so far is that the quiet splash is interrupted by a VPN username and password prompt: "Autostarting VPN 'openvpn'." I do not want to autostart my VPN connection at startup time — I'd rather connect during the GUI session, at will (by the command "sudo /etc/init.d/openvpn start"). Of course, I can always ignore the prompt and just press "enter" and the startup progress continues. What is more, if I do give my VPN username and password, it does not seem to start the connection — and I wonder how could it even do that, before I have even logged in... I'm not the only user of the laptop and I would like to have the quiet splash back without having to uninstall OpenVPN.

So my question is: How can I disable VPN autostarting at bootup time, or prevent the system from prompting me for VPN user information at bootup?

**Piraja** · September 17th, 2008

I tried to clarify the question a little bit. Would you think this might be a bug to be reported? Hardy did not prompt for VPN user information at startup time, anyway.

**Piraja** · September 22nd, 2008

I spotted the file to be modified: /etc/default/openvpn. I uncommented the line saying AUTOSTART="none" and now the bootup is not interrupted by Autostarting VPN 'openvpn' and username prompt. Instead of that: Autostart disabled. No VPN will be started.

**Piraja** · October 8th, 2008

Now I tried to launch an OpenVPN connection with "sudo /etc/init.d/openvpn start," but it won't work (as it used to with Hardy) since autostart is disabled!

So I will have to enable autostart — but then it will prompt for my VPN username and password at boot-up time (before the graphical login screen!), and that's definitely something I do not want to happen...

Rather confusing. Perhaps I should file a bug report, since this did not happen with Hardy.

P.S. (edit) I posted a new thread to the Intrepid Ibex Testing and Discussion forum and filed a bug report, too.