This bug report is a generalization of [bug 412574].

Connecting to the OpenVPN server at my work fails with this error:

  VPN Connect Failure

  Could not start the VPN connection 'MyCompany' due to a
  connection error.

  The VPN login failed because the VPN program could not
  connect to the VPN server.

The syslog messages from NetworkManager are more verbose but still does not reveal any more information. There are basically two pieces of information that I miss in this error message:

One is which VPN connection program/protocol it tried to use. I don't want to have to _assume_ it's OpenVPN although it's unlikely that it's anything else. Maybe only the openvpn plugin shows an error popup like that, but there's no way a non-developer can be certain of that. Thus it should show "OpenVPN" somewhere. (Same goes for the VPN properties dialogue, btw - I'm always doubtful whether I'm looking at an OpenVPN connection or something else. The "Create VPN Connection" assistant lets you choose, but editing an existing connection provides no clue.)

The other piece of missing information is of course what the error messages and status codes from that program are.

In my case I can successfully connect using openvpn from the command line, so I can't use that method to locate the problem (thus this bug is not the same one as [bug 412574]).