OpenVPN server problem.

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hdcosmos
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Mar 24, 2013 8:09 pm

OpenVPN server problem.

Post by hdcosmos »

Hi all,

I had an OpenVPN server setup on my WZR-HP-G300NH v1 running Gargoyle 1.5.9. Yesterday the router became unstable after adding some whitelist changes to the Restrictions list... it would restart everytime it attempted to get a WAN address lease.

Anyways, I re-flashed the router with the firmware again and that solved the restart problem. However, I have not been able to configure OpenVPN. The GUI will not create the necessary files. It's as if the configuration script is not running. It will say "running, not connected", but if you shh into the router and look inside the /etc/openvpn folder there is nothing. The certificates are not created and the firewall changes are not propagated through the router.

I have tried multiple times reflashing and seeing if I can get the UI to work. The one time it did work it created all of the files and made changes beautifully, however, the settings were not quite the way I wanted them. I attempted to change the settings in the UI and it claimed it had made the changes. However, if you ssh'ed into the openvpn config folder and looked at the server.conf file the settings were wrong.

I will keep trying to diagnose the problem on my own but I want to put this information out into the community to see if anybody has any helpful ideas or suggestions. I really appreciate it.

Thanks fellow Gargoylers!

ispyisail
Moderator
Posts: 5180
Joined: Mon Apr 06, 2009 3:15 am
Location: New Zealand

Re: OpenVPN server problem.

Post by ispyisail »

OpenVPN is stable on 1.5.8 (for me anyway)

pelowj
Posts: 25
Joined: Thu Feb 16, 2012 7:53 pm

Re: OpenVPN server problem.

Post by pelowj »

Did you restore settings from a backup?

I had similar issues until I started from scratch and added all my settings again manually.

-jp

hdcosmos
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Mar 24, 2013 8:09 pm

Re: OpenVPN server problem.

Post by hdcosmos »

ispyisail - Thank you, I will give 1.5.8 a try. Although, from what I remember I had WiFi dropout problems with that version.

pelowj - Yes, I have started from scratch multiple times and it does not help. The OpenVPN script still does not go through the initial configuration. The configuration files and certificates are not created. What's curious to me is that I got it running before and now I'm having such a hard time. Thank you anyways for the suggestion.

hdcosmos
Posts: 3
Joined: Sun Mar 24, 2013 8:09 pm

Re: OpenVPN server problem.

Post by hdcosmos »

Hello guys.

I finally got the OpenVPN server working again. I am not quite sure which of the steps I took was the one that finally fixed the problem, but I do not want to tempt fate trying to replicate them and risk it going bad, although it goes against my curious nature... I am a physicist.

The first thing I did was tftp the old DD-WRT firmware and verify that it worked with it. My thinking was that doing so would flush out all traces of Gargoyle. Next, I reinstalled Gargoyle 1.5.9 and did a hard reset. At this point the only things I had connected to the router were the computer I used to manipulate the web UI and the power cord. This time I used a different laptop with windows XP and ie8 instead of chrome in incognito mode, which is what I had been using before.

The only two settings I changed before tackling the VPN were the network settings, to set it to my subnet, and the web UI settings to free up external port 443. Then, finally proceeded to set the VPN. Everything went without a hitch! Then, I set my static ip assignments under DHCP and fixed a couple of other settings and added the line push "topology subnet" to the server.conf file, without which I have found my iphone OpenVPN client doesn't work. At this point I rebooted and proceeded to connect the other ethernet cables, including the WAN and power cycled the cable modem. The last two things I did were setup my dynamic DNS and turn on WiFi.

I know the order of most of the things I have described should have no influence in fixing the problem I was having but I wanted to share with the community my success story in case anyone encounters the same problem.

Cheers and thank you for producing and maintaining this wonderful firmware!

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