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    Unable to contact daemon

    OpenVPN
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    • S
      skoota
      last edited by

      Hi All,

      I recently discovered that the OpenVPN server running on my pfSense box is no longer working (after attempting to remotely connect to the VPN and it being unsuccessful).

      The Status > OpenVPN shows "Unable to contact daemon" and "Service not running?". Pressing the play button to start the service does not resolve the problem.

      I have tried deleting and re-setting-up the OpenVPN server but that did not resolve the issue either. Looking at the logs (in Status > System Logs > OpenVPN) it appears they are not updating, as the last log event was from 13 December 2022. Note, that I haven't tried connecting to the VPN since around about that time, so it's likely it hasn't been working since then and I just didn't notice.

      The box is a Netgate 3100 running pfSense Plus 23.01-RELEASE.

      Any suggestions on next steps would be greatly appreciated.

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      • V
        viragomann @skoota
        last edited by

        @skoota said in Unable to contact daemon:

        Looking at the logs (in Status > System Logs > OpenVPN) it appears they are not updating, as the last log event was from 13 December 2022. Note, that I haven't tried connecting to the VPN since around about that time, so it's likely it hasn't been working since then and I just didn't notice.

        Apart from connection attempts, also server starts should be logged there. If not, check the system log for hints to the reason, why the server did not start.

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        • S
          skoota @viragomann
          last edited by

          @viragomann said in Unable to contact daemon:

          check the system log for hints to the reason, why the server did not start.

          Thanks for the suggestion. It looks like I had a few separate (unrelated) issues. The first was my logs were not actually working at all...since none of the logs had updated since 19 March 2023 (the most recent entries for the System, Firewall, DHCP, etc. logs are 19 March).

          Going to System Logs > Settings showed a PHP error:

          Fatal error: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot access offset of type string on string in /usr/local/www/status_logs_settings.php:72 Stack trace: #0 {main} thrown in /usr/local/www/status_logs_settings.php on line 72 PHP ERROR: Type: 1, File: /usr/local/www/status_logs_settings.php, Line: 72, Message: Uncaught TypeError: Cannot access offset of type string on string in /usr/local/www/status_logs_settings.php:72 Stack trace: #0 {main} thrown

          This seemed related to a bug in pfSense 23.01 where if the <syslog> portion of the config.xml file is empty then this error will happen and no logging occurs. This is in the bug report here: https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/13942

          So, once I got that fixed and the logs worked again I saw that OpenVPN had the following error when starting:

          cannot open tun/tap dev /dev/tun1 no such file or directory pfsense

          ...which was related to another bug detailed here: https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/13963

          The ultimate fix for the OpenVPN issue was running the following command:

          kldxref /boot/kernel

          ...and then the OpenVPN service started immediately.

          Hope this might help anyone else in the same situation as me!

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