Marko Vojinovic wrote:
I have OpenVPN set up; I found the brief instructions that come with CentOS openvpn (eg /etc/openvpn/2.0/README) perfectly adequate - what I'm asking about is the _use_ of OpenVPN.
Sorry, what exactly are you asking for here? The implemented OpenVPN is nothing but a (virtual, distributed, etc...) LAN. Imagine several hosts connected together with a switch and a bunch of ethernet cables. It is used in the same way an ordinary LAN can be used.
Thanks for your response.
I'm interested to know how you - or anyone else implementing OpenVPN - actually uses it in practice. I use it to login to a remote computer over OpenVPN using ssh. (This is largely a safety measure, since a straightforward ssh connection sometimes fails because the remote machine has a dynamic address. But it is also simpler because it avoids firewall issues, as you say.)
Someone suggested that using ssh with openvpn was foolish since "encapsulating an SSH link with a VPN tunnel makes not much sense". So I'm interested to know how people in general use OpenVPN. Am I in fact unusual in using ssh with OpenVPN?
I prefer not to run OpenVPN through NetworkManager because I have problems with NM anyway, and also I don't run NM on the servers in question.