[Date Prev][Date Next] [Thread Prev][Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]

Re: Using OpenVPN client with wicd



On 07/07/2015 08:34 AM, Petter Adsen wrote:
On Tue, 07 Jul 2015 07:55:26 -0400 "James P. Wallen"
<jpwallen@comcast.net> wrote:



On 07/07/2015 04:25 AM, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1

On Mon, Jul 06, 2015 at 04:23:28PM -0400, James P.
Wallen wrote:

[...]

If any of you has managed to do this in conjunction
with wicd, I'd really appreciate a pointer to
information to help me get started. The man pages are
kicking me in the boinloins.

FWIW -- I set up OpenVPN (don't like it much[1], but had
to) without either NetworkManager nor wicd. What's the
functionality you expect from those? Automatic route
setting?

- - - - - - - - - [1] What do I do when I have to pierce
the corp firewall? Just use socat on both sides, port 443
(corp firewalls believe in numbers), TLS encapsulated
(don't know if they do deep packet inspection and don't
want to find out). Yes, some consider me weird.


Hi, Tomas! Thanks for your reply.

No, my issue has nothing to do with corporate firewalls.
I'm retired and go to places like libraries and coffee
shops and hospitals where I connect to guest networks. I
just use the Internet-located VPN to encrypt my connection
through the AP and to prevent tracking by the service
provider. At home I also use it for the same reasons.

Network-manager, as you're aware, has plugins for various
types of VPN software. It's easy to use, but it just seems
to be awfully large and, occasionally, a little
trouble-prone compared to wicd.

I could generally just use /etc/network/interfaces and
associated stuff, but was looking for a fiddle-free way to
make my connections when I'm moving around while still
enabling me to use OpenVPN.

As I said, just about every write-up on using OpenVPN I can
find tells me how to set up the server. Not what I want.
All of the write-ups on OpenVPN client I've found tell me
a) how to use OpenVPN with network-manager, or b) how to
import a setup. Neither of those is of any use to me. I
want to see if I can figure out how to use OpenVPN from the
CLI or via script using a certificate and password to
connect to my favorite VPN out on the Internet.

Again, thank you for your reply.

JP



https://wiki.debian.org/OpenVPN

Have you seen this? It doesn't contain anything particular to
wicd, but you could use what is there to set up a script.

There are a few links at the bottom that might also be of
help.

Petter


Thank you, Petter.

I'll try following that document through to a conclusion. I should always remember to look at the debian.org onlin documentation first.

However, the explanations seem to lean heavily toward explaining how to set up a server and a client, so I have to try to pick out carefully how to just do what I want to do.

I just need to connect a client to a publicly available VPN over which I have no control. It surprises me that I haven't seen a simple howto for that. Surely there are lots of people who use such "private VPNs" but who don't want to use network-manager.

Still, I may be able to piece together what I need to build scripts from the debian.org page. I remember that wicd has a provision for launching scripts following establishment of a network connection, so I may be able to use that capability to get what I want.

Thank you for the pointer!

JP


Reply to: