OpenVPN Issues since Upgrade

[Markus Schönhaber]

Gavin Lewandowski wrote:

> Since we have been upgraded to OpenVPN 2.1_rc7 i486-pc-linux-gnu [SSL]
> [LZO2] [EPOLL] built on Jun 11 2008 ,

which is the current version from the Hardy repositories,

> one of my machines fails to
> connect to the VPN tunnel if sudo /etc/init.d/openvpn start is used.
> 
> /var/log/syslog contains repeats of 
> 
> Jun 19 08:26:47 gavinlew-newark-desktop ovpn-client[21870]: SENT CONTROL
> [server]: 'PUSH_REQUEST' (status=1)

Seeing this is normal if the server is configured to push some settings
(for example routes, DNS server info etc.) back to the client.
Seeing this over and over again is indeed odd. And I don't have an
explanation for this behaviour.

> However, if I simply launch sudo openvpn /etc/openvpn/client.conf & ,
> the client authenticates correctly and the VPN tunnel is established.

If invoking openvpn manually works but invoking it via the startup
script doesn't, the interesting question is: what's the difference?
I'd double check if the init script really calls openvpn with the same
arguments you pass to it when invoking it manully. For example: is
really the same config file used?
ps -ef | grep openvpn
should tell you more.

> Has something changed in the upgraded package , or
> in /etc/defaults/openvpn with regards to this behaviour?

I haven't encountered any openvpn-related problems[1] on Hardy machines
which were upgraded from Gutsy or Dapper.

Regards
  mks

[1] short of the permisson problem that prevented openssl-vulnkey from
reading the keyfiles. But that's a different story and was very quickly
fixed.