Tutorial: Configuring pfSense as VPN client to Private Internet Access

johnpoz

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;218.18.222.209.in-addr.arpa. IN PTR

;; ANSWER SECTION:
218.18.222.209.in-addr.arpa. 300 IN PTR resolver2.privateinternetaccess.com.

So your saying pfsense can not use them.. Well pfsense doesn't go out the vpn for its own traffic..

I can use them from non privateinternaccess. Does your normal isp block/redirect dns traffic and only allow you to use their dns?

that fqdn your trying to connect resolves just fine

;; QUESTION SECTION:
;us-midwest.privateinternetaccess.com. IN A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
us-midwest.privateinternetaccess.com. 300 IN A 104.207.136.87
us-midwest.privateinternetaccess.com. 300 IN A 108.61.228.62
us-midwest.privateinternetaccess.com. 300 IN A 108.61.228.54
us-midwest.privateinternetaccess.com. 300 IN A 108.61.228.80
us-midwest.privateinternetaccess.com. 300 IN A 108.61.228.27
us-midwest.privateinternetaccess.com. 300 IN A 108.61.228.79
us-midwest.privateinternetaccess.com. 300 IN A 108.61.228.20
us-midwest.privateinternetaccess.com. 300 IN A 108.61.228.140
us-midwest.privateinternetaccess.com. 300 IN A 104.207.136.7
us-midwest.privateinternetaccess.com. 300 IN A 108.61.101.131
us-midwest.privateinternetaccess.com. 300 IN A 108.61.228.116
us-midwest.privateinternetaccess.com. 300 IN A 108.61.228.69
us-midwest.privateinternetaccess.com. 300 IN A 104.207.136.9

;; AUTHORITY SECTION:
privateinternetaccess.com. 86400 IN NS ns2.p28.dynect.net.
privateinternetaccess.com. 86400 IN NS ns4.p28.dynect.net.
privateinternetaccess.com. 86400 IN NS ns3.p28.dynect.net.
privateinternetaccess.com. 86400 IN NS ns1.p28.dynect.net.

How do you have your pfsense setup for dns.. Looks like you point to loopback which would be a normal setup if using the resolver, but then why do you have the PIA dns listed there as well?? How do you have pfsense setup for dns, forwarder, resolver, resolver in forward mode?

squiggie

Ok, I think I know what's going on here now. My pfSense WAN interface is receiving a bridged connection from the router. I'm not for sure how this was resolved but I figured that my ISP might not allow alternate DNS servers and thus the PIA servers I put in weren't being allowed. So what I did was remove those PIA DNS servers under system –> general setup and then check the box for Allow DNS server list to be overridden by DHCP/PPP on WAN. After doing that, I rebooted and then reran the test and it was successful and connected to the VPN via the DNS name instead of the IP address.

However, that allowed a DNS Leak and I don't want that. So I simply redid my settings, adding the PIA DNS entries back again under system –> general setup and unchecked the box. I'm not really sure if something is operating off a cached IP address or value but things are working now. I guess we'll see if things blow up again in a few days.

johnpoz

So your using the forwarder not the resolver?

You can force the resolver to use the vpn connection I do believe. In the resolver settings pick your vpn interface for the outgoing connection, put it in forwarder mode and put your pia nameservers in general setup and make sure you uncheck allow dhcp override your dns, etc. dnssec prob doesn't work with their nameservers, would have to check.

So I put in that IP you listed, changed my resolver to forwarder and picked the vpn interface that I have setup to one of my vps as the outgoing interface. Did a simple test of what is the IP of what is doing dns for me and


> dig whoami.akamai.net

; <<>> DiG 9.10.4-P2 <<>> whoami.akamai.net
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 36815
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 4096
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;whoami.akamai.net.             IN      A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
whoami.akamai.net.      180     IN      A       209.222.18.218

;; Query time: 150 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.9.253#53(192.168.9.253)
;; WHEN: Thu Aug 25 13:58:05 Central Daylight Time 2016
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 62

I put it back to resolver


> dig whoami.akamai.net

; <<>> DiG 9.10.4-P2 <<>> whoami.akamai.net
;; global options: +cmd
;; Got answer:
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 11143
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 1, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 1

;; OPT PSEUDOSECTION:
; EDNS: version: 0, flags:; udp: 4096
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;whoami.akamai.net.             IN      A

;; ANSWER SECTION:
whoami.akamai.net.      180     IN      A       24.13.snipped

;; Query time: 12 msec
;; SERVER: 192.168.9.253#53(192.168.9.253)
;; WHEN: Thu Aug 25 14:02:01 Central Daylight Time 2016
;; MSG SIZE  rcvd: 62

And as expected comes back with my public IP since I am doing the resolving directly, etc.

nitdawg1

Hello,

I've been trying to configure a setup where my Plex servers torrent traffic is routed through openVPN/PIA. I would also like still access my plex server remotely. I run the plex server on a different VLAN than the rest of my network (ex. VLAN30). So, I guess in essence what I'm trying to do is setup split tunneling so all my torrent traffic is secure using openvpn/PIA and all other traffic is sent over the network as usual.

I tried to use the tutorial in this post however, after following the instruction I lost all my Vlan interfaces and only had access to the LAN interface. I used a backup config.xml to restore my old settings but I really need some help.

I'm not sure what logs or screenshots I could offer to assist with troubleshooting. Let me know and I will provide then ASAP.

User1503

Great this is still alive and thanks again to everyone contributing. My [nflx-movies] were using an alias for IP's going through PIA and working fine. Then all of a sudden quit; along with my [amzn-jungle] box which gives geo-restriction. What changed? Jungle always worked, didn't complain like movies which was blocked for everyone a while back. Is there a simple setup so I can check my DNS to be correct? Currently I have DNS Srvr 1 as PIA with the PIAopt1 interface assigned. DNS 2 is google with the WAN_DHCP interface assigned. My setup is ISP provider router to PFsense box which controls local Lan. Some clients [jungle/movies] are under a firewall alias that routes everything through PIA. Other clients just bypass PIA and go out ISP router. All this is tested and works. I find it hard to believe that jungle all of the sudden is geo-blocking due to PIA? If others are seeing this please post. Otherwise, what did I change that I need to correct? Thanks!

Finger79

I'm able to connect just fine to PIA, but I'm seeing this in the logs every 10-15 seconds or so. Can someone help me interpret this?

Oct 18 01:25:46 openvpn 13031 MANAGEMENT: CMD 'state 1'
Oct 18 01:25:46 openvpn 13031 MANAGEMENT: CMD 'status 2'
Oct 18 01:25:46 openvpn 13031 MANAGEMENT: Client disconnected
Oct 18 01:25:51 openvpn 13031 MANAGEMENT: Client connected from /var/etc/openvpn/client1.sock
Oct 18 01:25:51 openvpn 13031 MANAGEMENT: CMD 'state 1'
Oct 18 01:25:51 openvpn 13031 MANAGEMENT: CMD 'status 2'
Oct 18 01:25:51 openvpn 13031 MANAGEMENT: Client disconnected
Oct 18 01:25:58 openvpn 13031 MANAGEMENT: Client connected from /var/etc/openvpn/client1.sock
Oct 18 01:25:58 openvpn 13031 MANAGEMENT: CMD 'state 1'
Oct 18 01:25:58 openvpn 13031 MANAGEMENT: CMD 'status 2'
Oct 18 01:25:58 openvpn 13031 MANAGEMENT: Client disconnected

Advanced options as follows:

persist-key
persist-tun
remote-cert-tls server
auth-nocache
script-security 2
tls-version-min 1.2

I see the same "Management" things anyways with or without some of the above advanced options.

Derelict

I believe those are simply logging of the Status > OpenVPN page or the OpenVPN status dashboard widget.

Turning down logging should clear those if they bother.

thethrow

Leaving this note for myself for 6 months when I forget. 8). Unsure if it was discussed prior, but may be worth adding to the tutorial.

I was struggling with the routing part, as I expected the traffic to stop when my gateway went down, once I assigned a VPN gateway to the "Default allow LAN to any rule"

In order to make this work how I expected, I had to make the following change:

(System | Advanced | Miscellaneous)
Do not create rules when gateway is down
By default, when a rule has a gateway specified and this gateway is down, the rule is created omitting the gateway. This option overrides that behavior by omitting the entire rule instead.

CTrax

While I appreciate the detail of the original PIA VPN tutorial and all of the subsequent contributions, I've not been able to combine all of that into a working VPN + Bypass configuration. PIA VPN works; it's the 'bypass' exception that does not.

Problem:
I've successfully configured PIA VPN and ipecho.net confirms a PIA IP address but something is preventing any Firewall exception Rule I create (to 'bypass' VPN) from having those IP routed around VPN – such rules appear to be just ignored. I've read, searched and tried every config modification I can find; no luck. All IPs for devices are static IPs on the same 192.168.1.X network but they all just use the tunnel.

Any idea of what to observe or what config to check or change would be appreciated. Thanks!

Intent:
Run the entire local 192.168.1.X net through the PIA VPN -- except a few specific static IP devices.

Network:
ISP - (108.x.x.x) - ISP ADSLmodem - (108.x.x.x) - SG-2440 - (172.28.x.x) - Router/SW - 192.1681.X local net
SG-2440 is at 2.3.2.p1, no added packages

Gateways:
DSLGW(default) / WAN / 108.x.x.x / 108.x.x.x / ADSL Gateway
PIAVPN_VPNV4 / WAN / 10.64.10.5 / 10.64.10.5 / Interface PIAVPN_VPNV4 (the 10.x.x.x appears dynamic)
PIAVPN_VPNV6 / WAN / <blank>/ <blank>/ Interface PIAVPN_VPNV4

Interfaces:
Existing defaults: WAN, LAN
Deleted: OPT2 (unused)

/ Name: PIAVPN / Network port: ovpnc1(PIA openVPN)

Firewall:
NAT:
Existing: (6) WAN Mappings
Copied: (6) and rename Interface: PIAVPN

Aliases:
Roku / 192.168.1.209
VPNPath / 192.168.1.200-208 range

Rules: WAN: (only existing block private and bogon)
Rules: PIAVPN: (no rules)
Rules: OpenVPN: (no rules)

Rules: LAN:
Added: Roku / any port,dest / DSLGW gateway
Added: VPNPath / any port,dest / PIAVPN gateway</blank></blank>

thethrow

@CTrax:

While I appreciate the detail of the original PIA VPN tutorial and all of the subsequent contributions, I've not been able to combine all of that into a working VPN + Bypass configuration. PIA VPN works; it's the 'bypass' exception that does not.

Problem:
I've successfully configured PIA VPN and ipecho.net confirms a PIA IP address but something is preventing any Firewall exception Rule I create (to 'bypass' VPN) from having those IP routed around VPN – such rules appear to be just ignored. I've read, searched and tried every config modification I can find; no luck. All IPs for devices are static IPs on the same 192.168.1.X network but they all just use the tunnel.

Any idea of what to observe or what config to check or change would be appreciated. Thanks!

Intent:
Run the entire local 192.168.1.X net through the PIA VPN -- except a few specific static IP devices.

Network:
ISP - (108.x.x.x) - ISP ADSLmodem - (108.x.x.x) - SG-2440 - (172.28.x.x) - Router/SW - 192.1681.X local net
SG-2440 is at 2.3.2.p1, no added packages

Gateways:
DSLGW(default) / WAN / 108.x.x.x / 108.x.x.x / ADSL Gateway
PIAVPN_VPNV4 / WAN / 10.64.10.5 / 10.64.10.5 / Interface PIAVPN_VPNV4 (the 10.x.x.x appears dynamic)
PIAVPN_VPNV6 / WAN / <blank>/ <blank>/ Interface PIAVPN_VPNV4

Interfaces:
Existing defaults: WAN, LAN
Deleted: OPT2 (unused)

/ Name: PIAVPN / Network port: ovpnc1(PIA openVPN)

Firewall:
NAT:
Existing: (6) WAN Mappings
Copied: (6) and rename Interface: PIAVPN

Aliases:
Roku / 192.168.1.209
VPNPath / 192.168.1.200-208 range

Rules: LAN:
Added: Roku / any port,dest / DSLGW gateway
Added: VPNPath / any port,dest / PIAVPN gateway</blank></blank>

3 things to check:
-See my post above, make the change.
-RE: LAN rules Roku is set at your "source"
-put your alias under Firewall | Aliases | IP

Also may want to try just plugging in the address to the source (e.g. 192.168.1.209 for roku), and not using an alias, just for testing.

bartgrefte

Just now I went through this howto to set up a virtualized pfSense as VPN client. Since I do not want all traffic to go through VPN, just one or two specific programs, I figured I'd set up a virtual pc with pfSense and Squid and set the programs in question to connect to Squid so that the traffic goes through pfSense and it's VPN client.

I got a bit confused at the compression setting, there is nothing to check, instead there's a drop down menu with 5 options, I set it to "enabled with adaptive compression". Not sure if it's the right choice though…

Plus option "Auth digest algorithm" is not listed in the howto, I left the default setting as it was, SHA1 (160-bit)

After finishing following the howto, I ended up with "reconnecting; tls-error" as status and this in the log:

Aug 30 14:25:40 openvpn 26470 TLS: Initial packet from [AF_INET]46.166.137.250:1194, sid=95cdf14a 8a04e2c6
Aug 30 14:25:40 openvpn 26470 VERIFY ERROR: depth=1, error=self signed certificate in certificate chain: C=US, ST=OH, L=Columbus, O=Private Internet Access, CN=Private Internet Access CA, emailAddress=secure@privateinternetaccess.com
Aug 30 14:25:40 openvpn 26470 OpenSSL: error:14090086:SSL routines:SSL3_GET_SERVER_CERTIFICATE:certificate verify failed
Aug 30 14:25:40 openvpn 26470 TLS_ERROR: BIO read tls_read_plaintext error
Aug 30 14:25:40 openvpn 26470 TLS Error: TLS object -> incoming plaintext read error
Aug 30 14:25:40 openvpn 26470 TLS Error: TLS handshake failed
Aug 30 14:25:40 openvpn 26470 TCP/UDP: Closing socket
Aug 30 14:25:40 openvpn 26470 SIGUSR1[soft,tls-error] received, process restarting
Aug 30 14:25:40 openvpn 26470 Restart pause, 2 second(s)

I solved that by changing the port from 1194 to 1198 and the encryption algorithm from BF-CBC (128-bit) to AES-128-CBC (for standard certificates), see https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/forum/discussion/comment/42294/#Comment_42294 for more info.

After that, the VPN showed as "up", so I accessed pfSense's console and ran both```
curl -s checkip.dyndns.org | sed -e 's/.Current IP Address: //' -e 's/<.$//'

curl ipinfo.io/ip

Both show an IP-address that's not my public IPv4-address issued by my ISP, nor the private address issued by my router to pfSense's WAN-interface, so I guess its working :)

I have some questions though.
- Should I disable IPv6 on pfSense? Since PIA doesn't seem to support it.
- As for the NAT-rules part of the howto, I doubled all the rules while setting the VPN as interface as instructed. Since there are now rules for two outbound interfaces, how will I know if the traffic always goes through the VPN?

DaveB

@CTrax:

While I appreciate the detail of the original PIA VPN tutorial and all of the subsequent contributions, I've not been able to combine all of that into a working VPN + Bypass configuration. PIA VPN works; it's the 'bypass' exception that does not.

Problem:
I've successfully configured PIA VPN and ipecho.net confirms a PIA IP address but something is preventing any Firewall exception Rule I create (to 'bypass' VPN) from having those IP routed around VPN – such rules appear to be just ignored. I've read, searched and tried every config modification I can find; no luck. All IPs for devices are static IPs on the same 192.168.1.X network but they all just use the tunnel.

Any idea of what to observe or what config to check or change would be appreciated. Thanks!

Intent:
Run the entire local 192.168.1.X net through the PIA VPN -- except a few specific static IP devices.

Network:
ISP - (108.x.x.x) - ISP ADSLmodem - (108.x.x.x) - SG-2440 - (172.28.x.x) - Router/SW - 192.1681.X local net
SG-2440 is at 2.3.2.p1, no added packages

Gateways:
DSLGW(default) / WAN / 108.x.x.x / 108.x.x.x / ADSL Gateway
PIAVPN_VPNV4 / WAN / 10.64.10.5 / 10.64.10.5 / Interface PIAVPN_VPNV4 (the 10.x.x.x appears dynamic)
PIAVPN_VPNV6 / WAN / <blank>/ <blank>/ Interface PIAVPN_VPNV4

Interfaces:
Existing defaults: WAN, LAN
Deleted: OPT2 (unused)

/ Name: PIAVPN / Network port: ovpnc1(PIA openVPN)

Firewall:
NAT:
Existing: (6) WAN Mappings
Copied: (6) and rename Interface: PIAVPN

Aliases:
Roku / 192.168.1.209
VPNPath / 192.168.1.200-208 range

Rules: WAN: (only existing block private and bogon)
Rules: PIAVPN: (no rules)
Rules: OpenVPN: (no rules)

Rules: LAN:
Added: Roku / any port,dest / DSLGW gateway
Added: VPNPath / any port,dest / PIAVPN gateway</blank></blank>

Hi

Just been struggling with a similar problem and concluded that it was my settings under Firewall/NAT/Outbound - Manual Outbound that were wrong. I had overwritten the existing rules with my VPN rules rather than duplicating and then modifying.

Copy of Rules that sorted it for me is shown below.
Hope you can get it sorted.

OutboundRules.png_thumb

Finger79

I don't think the ISAKMP/500 rules need to be created for the VPN. Just the two (localhost to VPN and LAN to VPN). They can be safely removed.

fnkngrv

I followed the PIA guide on their support page completely however it didn't work. For grins I went in and saw that there was a system update. I was on 2.3.4 and 2.4 released on Oct 10th. I have no clue if the update resolved some type of internal software issue however after going back in and having to redo the configs it is now working. Just figured that I would share for anyone that might be running into issues recently. Thanks for the tutorial. I will need to come back to it again for setting up a machine or two to skip using it.

On a sidenote I had followed Mark Furneaux's PFSense guide videos and had hardcoded a dozen or so DNS servers. Would it be advisable that I have my PIA VPN up and running to remove those?

Finger79

@fnkngrv:

On a sidenote I had followed Mark Furneaux's PFSense guide videos and had hardcoded a dozen or so DNS servers. Would it be advisable that I have my PIA VPN up and running to remove those?

Are you using Unbound as a DNS Resolver or the old school dnsmasq for DNS Forwarding? You can have your cake and eat it too. Meaning, you can have all your clients' DNS queries get routed over the VPN, but the pfSense box itself still needs to be able to do DNS in case the VPN tunnel goes down.

So your list would be something like:

127.0.0.1 (this is there by default, no need to manually add)
DNS 1
DNS 2
DNS 3
etc.

This way for PIA you don't have to hardcode the IP address in the OpenVPN client configuration page. You can actually do the FQDN us-florida.privateinternetaccess.com (or whatever).

gtj

This is an excellent tutorial and in great detail.
I have set the PIA client successfully however I have also set an OpenVPN sewrver for remote access and these 2 don't seem to work together. I have to disable the server to have the PIA Client encrypting traffic while if I want to connect to my LAN from a remote location, I have to disable the PIA client.

Can anyone please advise what rules should anyone use in order to have both OpenVPN instances running at the same time?

Any help woul;d be much appreciated.

Derelict

They are completely separate. Just use a separate tunnel network for the Remote Access OpenVPN.

gtj

@Derelict:

They are completely separate. Just use a separate tunnel network for the Remote Access OpenVPN.

Does this mean I have to choose under Firewall - Rules - OpenVPN Server a different gateway for the server? (''clean'' WAN instead of the PIA gateway)

Thanks!

Derelict

You need to select the interface you expect the connections from the client to arrive on. That is probably WAN and not PIA.

gtj

@Derelict:

You need to select the interface you expect the connections from the client to arrive on. That is probably WAN and not PIA.

Still can't set it right. When a client is connected to the OpenVPN server, my PIA connection is either slow or down. I have to disable the server to get my connection back.

Do I have to create a rule for both OpenVPN and PIA interfaces or just for OpenVPN? Currently under Firewall –-> Rules ---> PIA there aren't any rules set at all.

I have created a rule for the OpenVPN interface to look like the one below:

Interface: LAN (''Bridge'' in my case as I have bridged 2 NICs to act as one)
Address Family: IPv4
Protocol: TCP/UDP
Source:Any
Destination: Any
Destination Port Range: 1194

Advanced Options --> "Gateway"---> WAN

I apply the above but still don't see any difference.