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    OpenVPN dies and wont restart when my main internet temporarily goes down

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved OpenVPN
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    • O
      oldschoolrouterjockey
      last edited by oldschoolrouterjockey

      I occasionally have temporary drops in my internet, and my OpenVPN client connection on my SG1100 out to my VPN provider always dies and I have to go in and click on the play button of the client under Status->OpenVPN to get it working.

      Here is my setting which to my understanding is supposed to keep this from happening:
      5ab29795-1a5f-4390-a51d-2b8b36433ae1-image.png

      Am I doing something wrong?

      I have 22.01-RELEASE (arm64)

      F 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • F
        fabio1999ita @oldschoolrouterjockey
        last edited by

        @oldschoolrouterjockey is the service active (green) or is off (red)? because if it is red you can use the plugin service watchdog

        O 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • O
          oldschoolrouterjockey @fabio1999ita
          last edited by

          Im not sure if I follow the question but here is what I have:

          bd3846a9-be6b-4e35-963a-d81d42e68032-image.png

          and in the status page its like this:
          a84093e4-beee-4a05-a5f3-d9d650312c03-image.png

          and this is working now, but if my internet were to take an outage of a few minutes, when the internet comes back everything will be fine except this openvpn connection and that green check on the bottom right wont be there and I have to click on the "play" icon that will then be there instead to make it start working again.

          it just seems odd that I have to do that, with this config that I have.

          F 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • F
            fabio1999ita @oldschoolrouterjockey
            last edited by

            @oldschoolrouterjockey after you lose connection what color got the status? in your screen is green

            O 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
            • O
              oldschoolrouterjockey @fabio1999ita
              last edited by

              @fabio1999ita
              I'm trying to simulate an OPenVPN failure failure w/o disrupting the rest of my network, by null routing the current VPN server IP and also by nullrouting any further DNS lookup for the service to 127.0.0.1. My current VPN server FQDN in my client config is 87-1-US.cg-dialup.net and the current connection's remote host is on 154.16.192.246 and here is the result of my blackholing attempts:

              [22.01-RELEASE][root@REDACTED]/root: netstat -nr | grep 154.16.192.246
              154.16.192.246/32  127.0.0.1          UGSB        lo0
              [22.01-RELEASE][root@REDACTED]/root: host 87-1-US.cg-dialup.net
              87-1-US.cg-dialup.net has address 127.0.0.1
              [22.01-RELEASE][root@REDACTED]/root:
              

              However the OpenVPN status shows the connection still up:
              553c70ac-f4e0-44f8-bdb3-299188d9aec1-image.png
              And also my clients on the particular Wifi network that are forced to use the OpenVPN service still can access the internet and calls to ipinfo.me still shows their public IP address as 154.16.192.246.

              So now I am thoroughly confused, especially as I have earned my living over the past 25 years as a CCNP network engineer. This connection should NOT be up!

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              • M
                Myster_fr
                last edited by

                Hi,

                Don't know if you've already tried this : in the client configuration, at the bottom, in the "Custom options" field, try adding :
                connection retry -1;

                This should make OpenVPN retry indefinitely to reconnect.

                O 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • O
                  oldschoolrouterjockey @Myster_fr
                  last edited by

                  @myster_fr said in OpenVPN dies and wont restart when my main internet temporarily goes down:

                  Hi,

                  Don't know if you've already tried this : in the client configuration, at the bottom, in the "Custom options" field, try adding :
                  connection retry -1;

                  This should make OpenVPN retry indefinitely to reconnect.

                  I dont think that is still a valid option at least in the latest openvpn. their docs page at link text dont have that one as an option. it does have this:

                  --connect-retry-max n
                  n specifies the number of times each --remote or <connection> entry is tried. Specifying n as one would try each entry exactly once. A successful connection resets the counter. (default=unlimited).
                  

                  which seems to indicate "unlimited" is the default. Here is my config:

                  [22.01-RELEASE][root@me]/root: cat /var/etc/openvpn/client2/config.ovpn
                  dev ovpnc2
                  verb 3
                  dev-type tun
                  dev-node /dev/tun2
                  writepid /var/run/openvpn_client2.pid
                  #user nobody
                  #group nobody
                  script-security 3
                  daemon
                  keepalive 10 30
                  ping-timer-rem
                  persist-tun
                  persist-key
                  proto udp4
                  auth SHA256
                  up /usr/local/sbin/ovpn-linkup
                  down /usr/local/sbin/ovpn-linkdown
                  local <REDACTED>
                  engine devcrypto
                  tls-client
                  client
                  lport 0
                  management /var/etc/openvpn/client2/sock unix
                  remote 87-1-US.cg-dialup.net 443 udp4
                  auth-user-pass /var/etc/openvpn/client2/up
                  auth-retry nointeract
                  remote-cert-tls server
                  capath /var/etc/openvpn/client2/ca
                  cert /var/etc/openvpn/client2/cert
                  key /var/etc/openvpn/client2/key
                  data-ciphers AES-256-CBC:AES-256-GCM:AES-128-GCM
                  data-ciphers-fallback AES-128-GCM
                  allow-compression no
                  resolv-retry infinite
                  route-noexec
                  explicit-exit-notify 1
                  route-nopull
                  
                  1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • S
                    swixo
                    last edited by

                    I am experiencing same issue. I have to log into the client and restart it manually if the server restarts.

                    Did you fix your issue? What did you do?

                    opticalcO 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • opticalcO
                      opticalc @swixo
                      last edited by

                      @swixo
                      I have no idea - it seems to have gone away. Here are my current settings: (under the GUI, "ping settings" section, the "inactive" is set to 0, which isnt reflected in the file below:

                      : cat /var/etc/openvpn/client2/config.ovpn
                      dev ovpnc2
                      verb 3
                      dev-type tun
                      dev-node /dev/tun2
                      writepid /var/run/openvpn_client2.pid
                      #user nobody
                      #group nobody
                      script-security 3
                      daemon
                      keepalive 10 30
                      ping-timer-rem
                      persist-tun
                      persist-key
                      proto udp4
                      auth SHA256
                      up /usr/local/sbin/ovpn-linkup
                      down /usr/local/sbin/ovpn-linkdown
                      local <REDACTED>
                      engine devcrypto
                      tls-client
                      client
                      lport 0
                      management /var/etc/openvpn/client2/sock unix
                      remote <REDACTED> 443 udp4
                      auth-user-pass /var/etc/openvpn/client2/up
                      auth-retry nointeract
                      remote-cert-tls server
                      capath /var/etc/openvpn/client2/ca
                      cert /var/etc/openvpn/client2/cert
                      key /var/etc/openvpn/client2/key
                      data-ciphers AES-256-CBC:AES-256-GCM:AES-128-GCM
                      data-ciphers-fallback AES-128-GCM
                      allow-compression no
                      resolv-retry infinite
                      route-noexec
                      explicit-exit-notify 1
                      route-nopull
                      :
                      
                      S 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • S
                        swixo @opticalc
                        last edited by

                        This post is deleted!
                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                        • S
                          swixo
                          last edited by

                          I tried everything - then remembered issues with DCO in the past.

                          After disabling DCO - the link will reliably restore every time.

                          opticalcO 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • opticalcO
                            opticalc @swixo
                            last edited by

                            @swixo
                            I've got 22.01 which doesnt support DCO so I guess I already have it disabled "inherently"

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                            • J
                              jsnl
                              last edited by

                              I'm unsure if my issue is related and so I've opened a new topic, but I have this happen when my remote (not my server) internet is unstable. In my case I think it has something to do with exceeding the maxclients value. Is your maxclients value set low, or at the default number?

                              This is the thread I just opened with my logs attached.

                              opticalcO 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                              • opticalcO
                                opticalc @jsnl
                                last edited by

                                @jsnl said in OpenVPN dies and wont restart when my main internet temporarily goes down:

                                I'm unsure if my issue is related and so I've opened a new topic, but I have this happen when my remote (not my server) internet is unstable. In my case I think it has something to do with exceeding the maxclients value. Is your maxclients value set low, or at the default number?

                                This is the thread I just opened with my logs attached.

                                I dont have an option for maxclients in this config. I think because you're having problems with PFSense as an OpenVPN server and im having a problem with PFSener as an OpenVPN client

                                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
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