Trying to access LAN hosts from WAN when away from Home

[agrohe21]

I would like to access LAN hosts as if I were plugged into my network when I am connected remote. I assumed VPN could do something like this but I have tried enabling twice over the years 1.10 and now 1.12. Each time it bricks/freezes and I have to failsafe/reset. I have reviewed the forum and guides but I dont see anything to configure that is out of the ordinary.

I must be missing something.

TIA

[Lantis]

What exactly freezes?
The generation of keys takes a long time on a weaker device.

[agrohe21]

I have a new WRT32X, so that should have been quick.

The VPN config screen came back but then the app froze. I tried to power cycle both with switch and plug. Neither worked. I had to reset to get it to respond. The device seemed to be in some kind of comatose state. DHCP seemed to be working because other defices kept their assigned IPs even after release/renew. and I could see the LAN ip in use on my network by scanning with other tools. however, the HTTP server was not running nor could I ping or telnet to the router.

I had a backup from before the VPN config, so it was not a big deal but I would like to know what to keep/change in the default VPN configuration.

Is UDP always the right choice?
Does the cipher matter?
Gargoyle only supports one subnet, so why would clients be routed to another?

[Lantis]

The default config is usually sufficient for most users.
UDP is fine, any of the ciphers offered by Gargoyle are secure (today)

I assume your subnet question is about the subnet setting on the client config?
For an individual device (e.g. phone), this setting does nothing and isn't useful.
In the case where the client is another router with its own LAN subnet behind it, you can use this setting to effectively tie the two LANs together and make them routsble over the VPN.

The vpn config should not leave your device comatose,but the only way to understand what is wrong is to connect an SSH session to the router, start logread (logread -f) and then do the VPN config.
After 2-3 minutes, paste the log here and we will see what is going on.