Your OpenVPN should be listing on a WAN type interface.

So it is ... but after a few hours I discovered that pfsense had lost this setting. Set it to "Any", set it back to "WAN" and the problem was solved.

Why would you want do that ?

Virtual Private Networks — OpenVPN — Assigning OpenVPN Interfaces | pfSense Documentation

@travelmore said in OpenVPN not connecting:

to other, whereas in that link the person mentioned changing it to Interface IP address instead of other.

Be careful with this :

cba53f1e-fee1-42d5-8f76-215842ebfc49-image.png

as that a hostname like (RFC1918 like 192.168.0.b) this will be wrong in 99,x % of all cases.

When you are out, somewhere in the wild, surround by the hostile Internet, and you want to connect to 'home' over VPN, you have to connect to your ISP WAN IPv4. Certainly not to your RFC1918 like 192.168.0.x as shown in the image above, which can't be routed over the net.
So : second best choice : the ISP WAN as a host name.
Host name is your tunnel end point, and as the comment says : it could be an IP or a host name. If you shose the latter, it should be resolvable there where you are now. Said differently : it should be resolvable anywhere on the internet.
So : best : set up a DYNDNS so that a known 'hostname' always points to your ISP WAN. This is valid and useful if you have a dynamic IP and/or a static WAN IP.

@huydra I should had TL;DRed the thread... 😆 Got bumped up.

@viragomann That's exactly what I needed.... I made the change and tested...my public ip address matches my home address Thank you soo much!!!

@ikonomn most ISP routers will have a way to forward ports to an internal device (your pfSense) or set one as DMZ to forward all ports.

@mcury Oh, interesting (and sad).

I was able to enable CBC ciphers in the OpenVPN server and choose hw crypto for that as well. Can't tell if it works though. We will test and monitor CPU load etc for a check.

@nicp91-0
(I'm no pro, but...) I'm curious - did you ever try setting the gateway's monitor IP to the IP of the server you're connecting to?

Also, could be that since 9.9.9.9 is a DNS server, and some of these privacy VPNs might try to get you to use their DNSes (for privacy... maybe they block access to public DNSes like 9.9.9.9).

Fo my setup, I pinged the server name that's in the .OVPN file from the privacy VPN server and used that IP address in the gateway's monitor IP.

@gandalf33 said in OpenVPN TLS routing issue, shared key working fine:

iroute 192.168.0.0 255.255.255.0;

iroute does not work with DCO according to the docs.
So instead of this line try

route 192.168.0.0 255.255.255.0 10.8.11.2;

Ok. I've managed to fix it.
I used OpenVPN import functionality and it has imported the tunnel and it works as expected. Quite strange for me, but I compared the backups and it seems that the OpenVPN interface refuse to start when you put remote networks. Left the field empty allow the OpenVPN client to pull this settings from the server and it correctly set the needed IP address of the tunnel.

All good. End of story.

I still can't answer to myself why the OpenVPN daemon returned exit status 1 and quit without any warnings/errors when I tested it in the console.

This is a KI: https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/13963

The "kldxref /boot/kernel" and a reboot resolved it.

@deviace
If I understand your request correctly, watch this video a few times. It's kind of tailored to "Privacy VPNs", but I think it might apply to your OpenVPN interface.

Youtube Video

It discusses setting up a "tagging" rule on all of your LAN interfaces/networks and then use a floating rule to act as a "kill switch" to prevent the tagged packets from going out the WAN.

In this approach, the default gateway is still set to WAN, but you set all your LAN/OPT/VLAN interfaces to use the OpenVPN interface.

Hope I'm not sending you on a wild goosechase.

i think i got it. i disabled DCO and that seems to have fixed it. i can now hit the remote local resources and dns entries over there work now as well..:)

@viragomann got that figured out. thanks. I am now having as different issue that i will start another thread for..thanks again.

The same behavior was on the second unit connected via VPN.
23.01 with enabled DCO on VPN tunnel breaks Traffic Graph.
Is any fix/bug available?

Dear all,
I've discovered with plenty of pleasure that is possible to split DNS traffic.
You just need to associate a zone to DNS :)
https://openvpn.net/vpn-server-resources/troubleshooting-dns-resolution-problems/
(-> "Split-DNS when using DNS Resolution Zones")

if you configure on your firewall (Pfsense or what else) that for a specific "intranet" zone you have to query a specific DNS, that's work!
I've verified directly on the firewall (.91 is my IP address from the OpenVpn assigned subnet)
tcpdump -i ovpns1 src 10.x.y.91 and port 53
DNS queries for xyz.lan appear in the dump otherwise not (ISP DNS are used)

683d84ef-76ed-4027-8246-33f818df2e0c-image.png

Although you'll have to use OpenVpn client... (with tunnelblick, e.g., it will not split DNS)

That's all I needed.

Thanks to all

@viragomann Thanks for the advise. It worked finally. I just have a bit of doubt. After I created /30 and not added any remote networks, the server could not get an IP. It was fixed by adding remote IP on both ends which is strange cause if I only want to allow outbound IP without any inter-private routing, i don't need to specify it. This worked for shared-key setup but not on SSL/TLS.

I followed this Youtube tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8f13lfnEKY8
and I believe it is the same as your setup.

#1 Pfsense running 2 openvpn server instances (has corresponding network as remote network)
#2 Pfsense running 1 openvpn client to Pfsense #1 (has both other networks as remote network)
#3 Pfsense running 1 openvpn client to Pfsense #1 (has both other networks as remote network)

I wasn't able to ping from the Pfsense #2 to #3 nor vice versa.
Both #2 and #3 were able to ping to #1

But then I noticed it was only the Pfsense itself.
Clients on Pfsense #3 could reach clients on Pfsense #2.
Clients could also ping all pfsenses....
Client pfsenses can't ping clients on other network.

In fact this is the main purpose of the site-to-site-to-site VPN, so I have it working now.

I now have a few questions:

Is this behaviour to be expected? What do I need to do so #2 and #3 themselves can ping each other? Should I consider this a bug? Is this a recommended setup? I have a feeling it isn't as #2 and #3 can't reach each other anymore if #1 is failing. Do I solve that single point of failure by creating a server instance on either #2 or #3, and let the other client connect to it??