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    How stable is OpenVPN?

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved OpenVPN
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    • D
      DominikHoffmann @michmoor
      last edited by

      @michmoor: I get it now

      Is there a tutorial somewhere, that you know of, that you would recommend, on how to set up a pfSense box as an OpenVPN client?

      johnpozJ 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • johnpozJ
        johnpoz LAYER 8 Global Moderator @DominikHoffmann
        last edited by

        @dominikhoffmann said in How stable is OpenVPN?:

        pfSense box as an OpenVPN client?

        To where? Pretty much every vpn service has some "guide" on how to connect to their service - most of them have a section for pfsense.

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        • GertjanG
          Gertjan @DominikHoffmann
          last edited by Gertjan

          @dominikhoffmann

          39b0f79c-df99-4120-9e1c-7a2a71c09898-image.png

          Not crashing.
          62444 was signaled to stop. For the usual reasons like : an interface (WAN ?) went down.
          I agree : it should restart when the that interface came back.

          edit : to see what happened, look in the main system log for events at that moment.

          No "help me" PM's please. Use the forum, the community will thank you.
          Edit : and where are the logs ??

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          • D
            DominikHoffmann @Gertjan
            last edited by

            @gertjan said in How stable is OpenVPN?:

            @dominikhoffmann

            Not crashing.
            62444 was signaled to stop.

            Correct! That was, when I restarted the service.

            GertjanG 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • GertjanG
              Gertjan @DominikHoffmann
              last edited by

              @dominikhoffmann
              Ah, ok, so the openvpn server 62444 stayed silent - no log lines since last 24 December.
              Do you have enforced your openvpn server vpn rule, like not using port 1194, or limited to a known list op source IPs ?
              Normally, for a openvpn server, you would see ones in a while some log lines because your openvpn is "scanned". A bit scary at first, but actually quiet handy as you could see these tests as a sort of 'I'm still alive' tests.
              Or, true : openvpn was running but not listening anymore, which is close to a dead process.

              No "help me" PM's please. Use the forum, the community will thank you.
              Edit : and where are the logs ??

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              • D
                DominikHoffmann @Gertjan
                last edited by

                @gertjan said in How stable is OpenVPN?:

                Do you have enforced your openvpn server vpn rule, like not using port 1194, or limited to a known list op source IPs ?

                The firewall rule is the default one generated by the setup wizard:
                Screenshot 2023-01-05 at 12.16.51 PM.png

                So, the answer is, no.

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                • D
                  DominikHoffmann
                  last edited by

                  It went down again in the last couple of days. The OpenVPN logs did not show anything. Is there anything else I should check for?

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                  • stephenw10S
                    stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                    last edited by

                    When you try to connect with an external client do you see states created on the WANfor the incoming connection attempts?

                    I'm not aware of any issue in OpenVPN itself that behaves like that.

                    Steve

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                    • D
                      DominikHoffmann @stephenw10
                      last edited by

                      @stephenw10: I am not familiar with what states are and what that list would signify.

                      Do you mean entries like these:

                      Screenshot 2023-01-23 at 7.03.53 PM.png

                      I don’t believe that there were any entries in the states table showing evidence of my failed attempts to connect to the OpenVPN server, before I restarted the service. However, I will need to verify this, when I encounter it being down the next time.

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                      • stephenw10S
                        stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                        last edited by

                        Nope, those are states on the OpenVPN interface, so inside the tunnel. What I would expect to see are states on the WAN on whatever port you're running OpenVPN on, UDP 1194 by default.
                        If you don't see those states then the VPN traffic from the clients is not arriving which would explain why there are no logs for connection attempts.

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                        • D
                          DominikHoffmann @stephenw10
                          last edited by

                          @stephenw10: … And if a restart of the OpenVPN server fixes things, then that’s a sign that there was nothing else wrong upstream from the gateway, I would think.

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • stephenw10S
                            stephenw10 Netgate Administrator
                            last edited by

                            Except that we've seen in the other thread that doing so is triggering, at least, dpinger to restart. So it could be doing more than you think.

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