[CentOS] OpenVPN problem

Sun Feb 9 15:30:50 UTC 2014
Timothy Murphy <gayleard at eircom.net>

Kai Schaetzl wrote:

>> I'm having problems communicating with a remote server, with openvpn.
> 
> First, did you check that it works fine without OpenVPN (e.g. firewall
> open)?
> Second, what exactly are you doing/do you want to achieve?
> VPN makes sense if you go thru a triangle (client -> network a -> network
> b, where b allows access only from a) or if you want to secure certain
> kinds of remote connections, but encapsulating an SSH link with a VPN
> tunnel makes not much sense in my eyes.

It is not clear to me what you are saying.

Are you saying that having set up OpenVPN, with a server and clients,
it is not a good idea to login to a remote site with "ssh somewhere-vpn"?
If so, what is the best way (in your opinion) to connect to a remote site?
Most sites I have looked at suggest using network-manager-openvpn-kde
(I'm running Fedora-20/KDE).
I'd prefer not to involve NM if that can be avoided,
as it seems to me to add an unnecessary step to the operation.
Others suggest using some kind of OpenVPN GUI.

Or are you saying that I should use ssh directly without VPN?
In my case the remote site has a dynamic IP address,
and while I run ddclient there are times when this does not work.

In practice I maintain both connections as a safety precaution.

But I am genuinely interested in the best way to use OpenVPN.
All the documents I looked at online spent their time
explaining at inordinate length how to setup OpenVPN.
If anyone knows of a site with a simple explanation
of how to use OpenVPN (preferably with the commands and responses
during an actual session) I should be very grateful.



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