Getting OpenVPN machines in DNS forwarder
-
We have quite a few machines that are connected to our VPN. However, the only way to access them via Remote Desktop is by typing in their VPN LAN IP. Is there a way to get the machines to resolve via their PC names on the VPN without having configure each one individually? Right now we have them resolving to a DynDNS address. This means to find their VPN IP we search a domain to IP tool for the domain name, then look for that IP in the VPN list in the pfSense dashboard. This means everyone has to have access to the Dashboard which we would prefer not to have.
-
Not in any kind of automated way, not that I'm aware of. You'd have to setup Client-Specific Overrides so they all receive static IPs, and then add DNS forwarder entries manually.
I suppose if you had a bind or other server set to receive RFC ddns updates from clients, and the clients were set to register themselves in DNS, it might work (maybe) but that wouldn't have anything to do with pfSense at that point.
OpenVPN can execute a script on connect, so you could script some other action at the client level to 'announce' itself to some local web server or other service you setup.
There may be some other tactic I'm not thinking of though. This being the world of OSS and Unix, there are a thousand ways to do just about anything. Unless there aren't any.
-
It sounds like you have 2 options:
1. Configure a WINS server, add it to your DHCP scope and push it out to your VPN clients. This way, each connected VPN client will be dynamically mapped to the WINS server and therefore resolvable by name from your LAN.
2. Go to a bridged solution.
