Openvpn client service linux

How to auto start openvpn (client) on Ubuntu CLI?

The openvpn package comes with an init script /etc/init.d/openvpn . This script automatically sets up connection for every .conf (mind the extension) file in /etc/openvpn .

If you install OpenVPN via an RPM or DEB package on Linux, the installer will set up an initscript. When executed, the initscript will scan for .conf configuration files in /etc/openvpn, and if found, will start up a separate OpenVPN daemon for each file.

I got a bit stuck on this and ended up writing out all of the instructions for setting it up with systemd manually.

This worked for me using Ubuntu 16.10 and openvpn 2.3.11

Setting up your vpn to run from bash

These examples use expressvpn but most would work the same way

Download your vpn provider’s ovpn config file e.g. my_express_vpn_amsterdam_2.ovpn

move that to /etc/openvpn/ and rename it to end in .conf

sudo mv ~/Downloads/my_express_vpn_amsterdam_2.ovpn /etc/openvpn/amsterdam-2.conf 

Your VPN provider will provide you with a username and password for connecting over openvpn. Save the userename and then password each on their own line

sudo vim /etc/openvpn/express-vpn-crednetials.txt # add these lines YOUR_VPN_USERNAME YOUR_VPN_PASSWORD # save the file 

now edit /etc/openvpn/amsterdam-2.conf look for a line that says auth-user-pass and replace it with the path to your credential file

auth-user-pass /etc/openvpn/express-vpn-crednetials.txt 

Test your config! Start openvpn like this

sudo openvpn --config /etc/openvpn/amsterdam-2.conf 

openvpn should connect without asking for username or password

Remove existing (broken) service config for openvpn

sudo rm /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/openvpn.service 

Set up openvpn to run as a systemd service

The config that came with openvpn was broken so I removed it and created a new one based on this answer

Create systemd service for openvpn

sudo vim /usr/lib/systemd/system/openvpn@service 

[Unit] Description=OpenVPN Robust And Highly Flexible Tunneling Application On %I After=syslog.target network.target [Service] PrivateTmp=true Type=forking PIDFile=/var/run/openvpn/%i.pid ExecStart=/usr/sbin/openvpn --daemon --writepid /var/run/openvpn/%i.pid --cd /etc/openvpn/ --config %i.conf [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target 

the %i is used as a wildcard so that this service can be used for multiple vpn configurations. Set it up for the amsterdam-2.conf file that we created earlier

sudo systemctl start openvpn@amsterdam-2.service 

the systemd service should now be running on the amsterdam vpn. check its status like so

sudo systemctl status openvpn@amsterdam-2.service 

you should see several lines of output ending in Initialization Sequence Completed and your vpn should be running.

Hope this helps! related reading:

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Connecting to Access Server with Linux

Connecting to OpenVPN Access Server from Linux requires a client program. It will capture the traffic you wish to send through the OpenVPN tunnel, encrypting it and passing it to the OpenVPN server. And of course, the reverse, to decrypt the return traffic.

Linux Packages Discussed

OpenVPN Access Server	openvpn-as
OpenVPN 3 Linux Client	openvpn3
OpenVPN open source	openvpn

OpenVPN 3 Linux Client

The OpenVPN 3 Linux project is a new client built on top of the OpenVPN 3 Core Library. This client is the official OpenVPN Linux Client program. You can find an overview of the features, frequently asked questions, and instructions on installing the openvpn3 package on our OpenVPN 3 for Linux site.

After following the instructions there to install the client, you’ll need a connection profile. This is a file generated by your OpenVPN Access Server installation for your specific user account. It contains the required certificates and connection settings. Go to the Client web interface of your Access Server (the main address, not the /admin portion). Log in with your user credentials. You will be shown a list of files available to download. Pick the user-locked profile or the auto-login profile, and you will be sent a client.ovpn file. Save this file to your Linux operating system.

Once you’ve moved the file to your Linux system, you can import it.

openvpn3 config-import —config $

You can start a new VPN session:

openvpn3 session-start —config $

You can manage a running VPN session:

And so on. More details can be found here: OpenVPN3Linux.

OpenVPN open source OpenVPN CLI program

The open source project client program can also connect to the Access Server. The package is available in most distributions and is known simply as openvpn. It supports the option to connect to multiple OpenVPN servers simultaneously, and it comes with a service component that can automatically and silently start any auto-login profiles it finds in the /etc/openvpn folder, even before a user has logged in. This service component can be set to automatically start at boot time with the tools available in your Linux distribution if supported. On Ubuntu and Debian, when you install the openvpn package, it is automatically configured to start at boot time.

To install the OpenVPN client on Linux, it is possible in many cases to just use the version that is in the software repository for the Linux distribution itself. If you run into any connectivity problems when using outdated software, it may be due to a possible lack of support for higher TLS versions in older versions of OpenVPN. Follow the instructions found on the open source openvpn community wiki if you wish to install the OpenVPN client on your Linux system.

After installing, you will need a connection profile. This is a file generated by your OpenVPN Access Server installation for your specific user account. It contains the required certificates and connection settings. Go to the Client web interface of your Access Server (the main address, not the /admin portion). Log in with your user credentials. You will be shown a list of files available to you for download. Pick the user-locked profile or the auto-login profile, and you will be sent a client.ovpn file. Save this file to your Linux operating system somewhere. OpenVPN Access Server supports server-locked, user-locked, and auto-login profiles, but the OpenVPN command line client is only able to connect with user-locked or auto-login connection profiles.

We are assuming you are going to start the connection through either the command line as a root user, or via the service daemon. If you want unprivileged users to be able to make a connection, take a look at the community wiki for more information on how to implement that. Here we are going to focus on the simplest implementation; run the connection as root user directly, or via the service daemon.

Start a connection with an auto-login profile manually:

openvpn --config client.ovpn

Start a connection with a user-locked profile manually:

openvpn --config client.ovpn --auth-user-pass

If you use Google Authenticator or another extra factor authentication, add the auth-retry parameter:

openvpn --config client.ovpn --auth-user-pass --auth-retry interact

To start an auto-login connection via the service daemon, place client.ovpn in /etc/openvpn/ and rename the file. It must end with .conf as file extension. Ensure the service daemon is enabled to run after a reboot, and then simply reboot the system. The auto-login type profile will be picked up automatically and the connection will start itself. You can verify this by checking the output of the ifconfig command; you should see a tun0 network adapter in the list.

One major feature that is missing with the command line client is the ability to automatically implement DNS servers that are pushed by the VPN server. It is possible, but it requires you to install a DNS management program such as resolvconf or openresolv, and it may or may not clash with existing network management software in your OS. The idea here, however, is that you use a script that runs when the connection goes up, and when it goes down, that uses resolvconf or openresolv to implement the DNS servers for you. The reason why this client is not able to manage it completely by itself is mainly because in an operating system like Windows, Macintosh, Android, or iOS, there is already an established single method of handling DNS management. It is therefore easy for us to create a software client for those operating systems that already knows how to handle DNS. But Linux is available in so many variations and also supports different programs and methods of implementing DNS servers, and so it was only reasonable to leave built-in DNS support out of the OpenVPN program and instead to provide, where possible, a script that handles DNS implementation. Such a script could even be written by yourself to do whatever tasks are necessary to implement the DNS servers in your unique situation.

Fortunately on Ubuntu and Debian, for example, there is the /etc/openvpn/update-resolv-conf script that comes with the openvpn package that handles DNS implementation for these operating systems. You need only to activate the use of these by following the instructions:

Open your client.ovpn file in a text editor:

At the very bottom simply add these lines:

script-security 2 up /etc/openvpn/update-resolv-conf down /etc/openvpn/update-resolv-conf

The first line enables the use of external scripts to handle the DNS implementation tasks. The up and down lines are there to implement DNS servers pushed by the VPN server when the connection goes up, and afterwards to undo it, when the connection goes down.

Ubuntu network management program

There is also the option of connecting through the GUI using the openvpn extension for the Gnome network manager plugin. But this is currently a bit tricky to set up. There is for example the incorrect assumption that all VPNs will be able to redirect Internet traffic, and older versions might not understand the .ovpn file format, requiring you to split up the certificate embedded in it into separate file. And you would likely have to dig into the options to ensure that a default Internet traffic route going through the VPN server is not always enabled by default, especially for servers where you only give access to some internal resources, and not the entire Internet. However the advantage of using the GUI component is that you can start/stop the connection from the desktop environment on Linux.

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