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I have installed the strongswan package on Ubuntu 23.04. in order to connect to a VPN via IPsec/IKEv2. When opening the VPN settings in gnome, I receive the error message "unable to load VPN connection editor), like in the image below.

enter image description here

This only happens when choosing IPsec/IKEv2. On OpenVPN for example, the editor opens as expected.

When researching solutions, I have installed loads of alledged dependencies, too many to remember. At least the following:

libstrongswan-extra-plugins/lunar,now 5.9.8-3ubuntu4 amd64 [installed]
libstrongswan-standard-plugins/lunar,now 5.9.8-3ubuntu4 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libstrongswan/lunar,now 5.9.8-3ubuntu4 amd64 [installed,automatic]
network-manager-strongswan/lunar,now 1.6.0-1 amd64 [installed]
strongswan-charon/lunar,now 5.9.8-3ubuntu4 amd64 [installed]
strongswan-libcharon/lunar,now 5.9.8-3ubuntu4 amd64 [installed,automatic]
strongswan-nm/lunar,now 5.9.8-3ubuntu4 amd64 [installed,automatic]
strongswan-pki/lunar,now 5.9.8-3ubuntu4 amd64 [installed]
strongswan-starter/lunar,now 5.9.8-3ubuntu4 amd64 [installed,automatic]
strongswan/lunar,now 5.9.8-3ubuntu4 all [installed]

In the case of openvpn, there is the network-manager-openvpn-gnome package, as described here Unable to load VPN connection editor in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS What is the equivalent for strongswan in Ubuntu? I can find it for other distros: https://packages.fedoraproject.org/pkgs/NetworkManager-strongswan/NetworkManager-strongswan-gnome/

But for Ubuntu 23.04., I cannot get strongswan to work in gnome. What am I missing?

Gerry
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1 Answers1

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For a while, the network-manager-strongswan Debian/Ubuntu package only shipped the GTK 3 version of the strongSwan NetworkManager plugin, which won't work if the application that loads it uses GTK 4.

The GTK 4 version of the plugin was only added with version 1.6.0-2 of the package in June 2023, which is shipped with Debian unstable and Ubuntu 23.10. Debian stable ships 1.6.0-1+deb12u1, which also includes the GTK 4 version of the plugin. However, Ubuntu 23.04 currently only ships 1.6.0-1, which does not.

I guess you'd have to file a bug against the Ubuntu package to notify the maintainers.

As a workaround, you should be able to configure the VPN via nm-connection-editor as that's apparently linked to GTK 3.

ecdsa
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