Hello everyone!
Could somebody please help me understand what’s going on and hopefully fix it.
I’m using ExpressVPN app for Fedora. Several minutes after it connects, the status bar wi-fi icon which normally shows radio signal strength, turns into a question mark. However, all network resources stay available, websites load etc. The only thing that stops connecting is the GNOME Software app.
If I disconnect VPN, everything returns back to normal.
Has somebody encountered this kind of behaviour? What is causing it, what is the risk for me (obviously, something is not working correctly)? Can it be fixed?
I’ve upgraded to F30 today, but had the same issue on F29.
NetworkManager will check a site to see if it’s connected to the Internet at large. If your VPN takes over all connections but does not allow connection to the general Internet (or at least wherever it checks by default), then you will see the question mark.
See the Connectivity Section of man NetworkManager.conf for a longer explanation of what it does and how you can configure it.
Yes, I think the ExpressVPN application takes over all connections, because it has the network lock feature, where according to their manual firewall rules will be put in place to prevent IP traffic from leaving the device except via the VPN tunnel.
The question is, can Connection Manager ping whatever it pings via VPN tunnel created by the app, and thus not trigger this false positive? I’m asking because when I have created a VPN connection using advanced network configuration, and when connect to VPN using it, this issue doesn’t arise.
I’d like to use the ExpressVPN app, but this issue worries me. It stops Software app from working correctly, and it most certainly writes unknown number of errors to some logs. Maybe some other drawbacks, I’m not sure at the moment.
Welcome to Fedora, @mnj10 . Since this topic was posted against a now end-of-life version of Fedora over three years ago, please start a new topic with your issue.