Re: OpenVPN

[Joe <joe@jretrading.com>]

On Thu, 30 Aug 2012 20:41:00 +0200
Registros Web <registros.web@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Aug 30, 2012 at 3:44 PM, cletusjenkins
> <cletusjenkins@zoho.com> wrote:
> >  > On Thu, Aug 30, 2012 at 02:06:17AM -0700, cletusjenkins wrote:
> >  > > I'm trying to connect to a VPN service via openVPN. When I try
> >  > > to connect (via network manager's gui) I get an error saying
> >  > > the openvpn service is not running. I do not see any errors in
> >  > > messages, syslog, daemon.log or dmesg about this. When I
> >  > > manually start the service it just says that it is starting,
> >  > > but nothing else. However running ps -ef shows no new
> >  > > processes. Stopping the openvpn service makes no difference in
> >  > > the process list either. I've restarted network-manager and
> >  > > even rebooted to ensure everything is loading properly, but to
> >  > > no avail.
> >  > >
> >  > > To get to my current state i installed:
> >  > >
> >  > > sudo apt-get install openvpn network-manager-openvpn
> >  > > network-manager-openvpn-gnome
> >  > >
> >  > > I created the VPN connection with the instructions from the
> >  > > VPN service, but since I can't get the OpenVPN software to
> >  > > even run I don't know what help they can provide.
> >  >
> >  > Try adding the following lines to your server's vpn *.conf file:
> >  >
> >  > verb 3
> >  > log-append /tmp/openvpn.log
> >  >
> >  > and restart the openvpn service. If the file doesn't appear then
> >  > you may have a syntax error in your config. If the file does
> >  > appear, check it for errors.
> >  >
> >
> > I don't quite follow what you are advising me. I don't have any vpn
> > *.conf file at least not in /etc/, I'm not running a vpn server,
> > I'm just trying to connect to an existing vpn server outside of my
> > control. When I try to connect to the VPN, it says the connection
> > fails because the openvpn service isn't running. I've tried running
> > a dpkg-reconfigure on openvpn, but it doesn't ask for any
> > configuration options from me, so whatever it sets up must be
> > vanilla default settings. From the error message I thought the
> > openvpn service would need to be running to support my outward
> > connection, but wouldn't need any local configuration (other than
> > the VPN certificate and settings I got from the company I signed
> > up, which I entered into the network-manager's VPN gui).
> 
> Whether you are acting as a server or a client you need to have a
> config file (.conf) in the /etc/openvpn directory (wich is the default
> location where the openvpn service will look for .conf files and will
> try to start those connections automatically when the service is
> started). Check if there is one. In case there is one, you can open a
> console and try to start the connection manually so you could see if
> it throws any errors with the following command:
> 
> # openvpn /etc/openvpn/<configfile>.conf
> 
> If there is no .conf file, you need to set one up. Check for examples
> at the openvpn.net site
> (http://openvpn.net/index.php/open-source.html).
> 

Network Manager can handle most OpenVPN configuration options, and is
a viable alternative to using a command-line invocation with a
configuration file. As long as you don't get too exotic, and the
server admin is aware of the NM plugin's current limitations. I use NM
on Ubuntu 10 to connect to an OpenVPN server on Squeeze.

Assuming the OP has been given the correct configuration details to be
used with NM, I think this problem is likely to be caused by a network
blockage of some kind, possibly a workstation firewall, or even a
misspelled URL. As long as the client can see the server, which appears
not to be the case here, some sort of useful error message should be
produced, not just 'I can't see it'.

-- 
Joe