Unable to use VPN with manually configured wifi interface

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. network-manager will ignore any manually configured interfaces and subsequently the nm_vpn_manager will not work in the way that you desire. In the event that you want to use the nm_vpn_manager you should use NetworkManager to configure your interface. Thanks!

Brian - I can't use Network-Manager because I require that my interfaces be brought up before I log in.

I still need VPN functionality.

My wireless interface (eth0) was configured using network-manager, with the wired interface (eth0) is disabled. But I also get the "no currently active network device, won't activate VPN" error in syslog whenever I try activating VPN through network-manager.

A work-around seems to be to rename the interfaces so that eth0 is the active connection (in my case, the wireless). See: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=601671

But a better solution would be to make the network-manager use the routing table in determining which interface to use for the vpn.

I can confirm this bug, network manager will only allow you to connect to a VPN if the wireless connection is established automatically (marking the bug as such)

I can confirm, vpn-connection not starting if devices configure manually.
I use different location settings, first with both eth0 (wired) and ath0 (wireless) in roaming mode and second only eth0 (wired) manually configured with static ip.
First Problem nm-applet never shows vpn connection with second location settings until I configure the wireless in roaming mode, but that is an other bug.

With this changed second location settings I pull to start a vpn connection and syslog shows this:

ay 7 14:15:24 popalf kernel: [ 631.544114] e100: eth0: e100_watchdog: link up, 100Mbps, full-duplex
May 7 14:15:31 popalf NetworkManager: <info> Will activate VPN connection 'home', service 'org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.openvpn', user_name '*******', vpn_data 'connection-type / x509 / dev / tun / remote / ******.dyndns.org / port / 1194 / proto / udp / servercert-insecure / no / ca / PATH-TO/userca.pem / cert / PATH-TO/usercert.pem / key / PATH-TO/userkey.pem / comp-lzo / yes / shared-key / / local-ip / / remote-ip / / username / / cipher / BF-CBC', route '10.1.0.0/16'.
May 7 14:15:31 popalf NetworkManager: <WARN> nm_vpn_manager_activate_vpn_connection(): nm_vpn_manager_activate_vpn_connection(): no currently active network device, won't activate VPN.

I can confirm this bug to. It doesn't effect wireless only. Even if you have a static eth0 (wired) address you can't access any VPN connection. You always get a "no currently active network device". In fact my server is a small family server, so i need an up and running eth0 before login. Due to previous discussion there is a pragmatic workarround. I've configured eth1 (onboard) as roaming interface with dhcp. Now i can connect my company VPN without any problem.

Same problem with Static IP over LAN.

fixed by network-manager 0.7 (available in intrepid).

If you cant wait and cannot upgrade to hardy and feel brave to use not-released packages, the network-manager team maintaines NM 0.7 hardy backports in their PPA.