[CentOS] OpenVPN problem

Tue Feb 11 01:15:15 UTC 2014
Timothy Murphy <gayleard at eircom.net>

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.

-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net
School of Mathematics, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland