Server Mode¶. The OpenVPN Server Mode allows selecting a choice between requiring Certificates, User Authentication, or both. The wizard defaults to Remote Access (SSL/TLS + User Auth).The possible values for this choice and their advantages are: Remote Access (SSL/TLS + User Auth). Configure the Remote Access Server for Always On VPN; In this step, you'll install and configure the server-side components necessary to support the VPN. The server-side components include configuring PKI to distribute the certificates used by users, the VPN server, and the NPS server.
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Setting up OpenVPN on PFSense 2.4.x is a straightforward but rather long process but hopefully this step-by-step guide can give you the direction you need to implement this solution as painlessly as possible. There are 3 primary steps to installing and configuring OpenVPN on PFSense:
- Create the Certificate Infrastructure
- Configure OpenVPN on PFSense
- Configure Client Access
VPN’s are very versatile infrastructure solutions which give you the ability to enable remote access to your local environment. They are also a more secure solution than exposing remote access protocols such as RDP or SSH directly over the Internet and also provide you with a level of privacy and security when you are using the Internet from insecure locations.
Let’s get started.
OpenVPN uses certificates to secure the VPN service for authentication and encryption purposes. The first thing we need to do on PFSense is create a Certificate Authority. If you already have one configured you can skip this step.
Creating a Certificate Authority on PFSense
The first step in the process is to navigate to the built-in PFSense Certificate Manager
You will then be presented with a dashboard detailing the list of CA’s installed on the server. In the example below there isn’t one so click on ‘+Add‘ to create a new one.
Next we need to fill out the form which PFSense will use to create the Certificate Authority. Since we are building an Internal Certificate Authority, select this option from the drop-down list as highlighted in the image below and then fill out the necessary details about your organization in the fields provided. Remember to give you CA a useful common name which you can use to identify it. In my example I used PFSense_RootCA. Once done, click on ‘Save‘ and your Internal Certificate Authority will be created.
Creating the OpenVPN Server Certificate on PFSense
The next step is to create the certificate for the OpenVPN server which clients will use to verify the identity of the server when connecting to it. Under System – Certificate Manager navigate to the Certificates tab and click on ‘+ Add/Sign‘.
Next complete the form to create the certificate. Note you need to select the ‘Create an internal Certificate’ method and ensure you select ‘Server Certificate’ as the certificate type. Fill in the rest of the relevant information and once complete, click on ‘Save‘.
The certificate infrastructure needed for OpenVPN is now complete so we can move onto the next phase, creating the OpenVPN service
We will be using the OpenVPN configuration wizard for this step. To start go to VPN in the main menu and then click on OpenVPN.
Next click on the ‘Wizards‘ tab to start the configuration sequence.
We now need to select type of server. In the drop-down list provided, select ‘Local User Access‘ and then click ‘Next‘
Next Select the Certificate Authority and click ‘Next‘. If you have not created one, follow the steps above.
The next step is to select the VPN Server Certificate. Once completed click ‘Next‘. Again, if you have not created one, follow the steps above.
Next you will need to complete the Server Setup form which consists of four sections: General OpenVPN Server Information, Cryptographic Settings, Tunnel Settings and Client Settings. As each environment is different, you may need to adjust these to meet your specific requirements. The settings below are the default settings which ensure privacy and use PFSense as your DNS server etc.
First, let’s configure the General OpenVPN Server Information. Leave everything as default and give your VPN a description if you so choose as per the example below.
![Access Access](https://www.petenetlive.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/018-VPN-Server-Certificate-Subject.png)
Under Cryptographic Settings, leave everything as default but change the Auth Digest Algorithm to SHA256 as per the example below since SHA1 is not that secure.
Under Tunnel Settings, enter the IP address range in CIDR notation for the Tunnel network (this will be the IP address range OpenVPN will use to assign IP’s to VPN clients). You also need to tick the checkbox labeled Redirect Gateway to ensure all clients only use the VPN for all their traffic. Next enter the local network IP address range in CIDR notation (this is usually your LAN) and then set your maximum number of concurrent connections.
In my configuration example I have left all Client Settings in their default state. Here you may want to specify a DNS server etc. Once completed click on ‘Next‘.
Next the wizard will want to create the Firewall rule configuration. Select the Firewall rule and the OpenVPN rule as per the example below and click ‘Next‘
Finally, the configuration is complete. Click ‘Finish‘.
You should now have a configured OpenVPN server, a newly created WAN Firewall Rule and an OpenVPN tab under Firewall rules with the OpenVPN rule configured. Examples below.
Now that the OpenVPN server is up and running, we need to configure VPN client access.
Creating the OpenVPN Client on PFSense
Navigate to VPN – OpenVPN and click on the ‘Clients‘ tab and then click on ‘+Add‘.
This will open the OpenVPN client edit form which has 5 sections, General information, User Authentication Settings, Cryptographic Settings, Tunnel Settings and Advanced Configuration. As with the server config you will need to configure these settings to match your specific requirements. Below are the minimum changes you need to make.
Under General information enter the Server IP address or Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) of your PFSense server and provide a description.
Under User Authentication Settings provide a Username and Password.
Under Cryptographic Settings select SHA256 for the Auth digest algorithm
Under Advanced Configuration select ‘IPv4’ Only and then click ‘Save‘
You should now have a suitably configured client configuration
Installing the OpenVPN Client Export Package
We now need to go and install the OpenVPN Client Export package so we can export the client configuration which we will need to provide to clients so that they can connect to our OpenVPN server. Dss player for mac.
First go to System – Package Manager
Click on Available Packages and then search for OpenVPN. In the search results which are returned click on ‘Install‘ to install the openvpn-client-export package.
On the next screen click on ‘Confirm‘
The package will then install and you should get notified if it was installed successfully.
Adding the VPN User
![Download Download](https://www.synology.com/helpfile/help/VPNCenter/1.2/online_img/VPNCenter/vpn_setup/02.png)
We now need to create the VPN user. To do this go to System – User Manager and click on ‘Add‘ to create a new user. Fill in the username and password which needs to match the config you created under Client Settings during the OpenVPN client configuration. Ensure you tick ‘Click to create user certificate‘ and then give the certificate a name and select your Certificate Authority. Once all is done click on ‘Save‘
You have no completed the OpenVPN setup. To download the Client Configuration navigate to Client Export under the OpenVPN menu item.
If all is configured correctly you should now be presented different download options which give you the OpenVPN config settings you need to configure your client so that they are able to connect to your PFSense OpenVPN server.
OpenVPN is a Virtual Private Networking (VPN) solution provided in the Ubuntu Repositories. It is flexible, reliable and secure. It belongs to the family of SSL/TLS VPN stacks (different from IPSec VPNs). This chapter will cover installing and configuring OpenVPN to create a VPN.
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If you want more than just pre-shared keys OpenVPN makes it easy to set up a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) to use SSL/TLS certificates for authentication and key exchange between the VPN server and clients. OpenVPN can be used in a routed or bridged VPN mode and can be configured to use either UDP or TCP. The port number can be configured as well, but port 1194 is the official one; this single port is used for all communication. VPN client implementations are available for almost anything including all Linux distributions, OS X, Windows and OpenWRT based WLAN routers.
Server Installation
To install openvpn in a terminal enter:
Public Key Infrastructure Setup
The first step in building an OpenVPN configuration is to establish a PKI (public key infrastructure). The PKI consists of:
- a separate certificate (also known as a public key) and private key for the server and each client.
- a master Certificate Authority (CA) certificate and key, used to sign the server and client certificates.
OpenVPN supports bidirectional authentication based on certificates, meaning that the client must authenticate the server certificate and the server must authenticate the client certificate before mutual trust is established.
Both server and client will authenticate the other by first verifying that the presented certificate was signed by the master certificate authority (CA), and then by testing information in the now-authenticated certificate header, such as the certificate common name or certificate type (client or server).
Certificate Authority Setup
To setup your own Certificate Authority (CA) and generate certificates and keys for an OpenVPN server and multiple clients first copy the
easy-rsa
directory to /etc/openvpn
. This will ensure that any changes to the scripts will not be lost when the package is updated. From a terminal, run:Note: If desired, you can alternatively edit
/etc/openvpn/easy-rsa/vars
directly, adjusting it to your needs.As
root
user change to the newly created directory /etc/openvpn/easy-rsa
and run:Server Keys and Certificates
Next, we will generate a key pair for the server:
Diffie Hellman parameters must be generated for the OpenVPN server. The following will place them in
pki/dh.pem
.And finally a certificate for the server:
All certificates and keys have been generated in subdirectories. Common practice is to copy them to /etc/openvpn/:
Client Certificates
The VPN client will also need a certificate to authenticate itself to the server. Usually you create a different certificate for each client.
This can either be done on the server (as the keys and certificates above) and then securely distributed to the client. Or vice versa: the client can generate and submit a request that is sent and signed by the server.
To create the certificate, enter the following in a terminal while being user root: Acoustic solutions lcdw19hdf manual.
If the first command above was done on a remote system, then copy the .req file to the CA server. There you can then import it via
easyrsa import-req /incoming/myclient1.req myclient1
. Then you can go on with the second sign-eq
command.In both cases, afterwards copy the following files to the client using a secure method:
pki/ca.crt
pki/issued/myclient1.crt
As the client certificates and keys are only required on the client machine, you can remove them from the server.
Simple Server Configuration
Along with your OpenVPN installation you got these sample config files (and many more if you check):
Start with copying and unpacking server.conf.gz to /etc/openvpn/server.conf.
Edit
/etc/openvpn/myserver.conf
to make sure the following lines are pointing to the certificates and keys you created in the section above.Complete this set with a ta key in
etc/openvpn
for tls-auth like:Edit
/etc/sysctl.conf
and uncomment the following line to enable IP forwarding.Then reload sysctl.
That is the minimum you have to configure to get a working OpenVPN server. You can use all the default settings in the sample server.conf file. Now start the server.
Be aware that the “systemctl start openvpn” is not starting your openvpn you just defined.
Openvpn uses templatized systemd jobs, openvpn@CONFIGFILENAME. So if for example your configuration file is
Openvpn uses templatized systemd jobs, openvpn@CONFIGFILENAME. So if for example your configuration file is
myserver.conf
your service is called openvpn@myserver. You can run all kinds of service and systemctl commands like start/stop/enable/disable/preset against a templatized service like openvpn@server.You will find logging and error messages in the journal. For example, if you started a templatized service openvpn@server you can filter for this particular message source with:
The same templatized approach works for all of systemctl:
You can enable/disable various openvpn services on one system, but you could also let Ubuntu do it for you. There is config for
AUTOSTART
in /etc/default/openvpn
. Allowed values are “all”, “none” or space separated list of names of the VPNs. If empty, “all” is assumed. The VPN name refers to the VPN configutation file name. i.e. home
would be /etc/openvpn/home.conf
If you’re running systemd, changing this variable will require running systemctl daemon-reload
followed by a restart of the openvpn service (if you removed entries you may have to stop those manually).After “systemctl daemon-reload” a restart of the “generic” openvpn will restart all dependent services that the generator in /lib/systemd/system-generators/openvpn-generator created for your conf files when you called daemon-reload.
Now check if OpenVPN created a tun0 interface:
Simple Client Configuration
There are various different OpenVPN client implementations with and without GUIs. You can read more about clients in a later section on VPN Clients. For now we use commandline/service based OpenVPN client for Ubuntu which is part of the very same package as the server. So you have to install the
openvpn
package again on the client machine:This time copy the client.conf sample config file to /etc/openvpn/:
Copy the following client keys and certificate files you created in the section above to e.g. /etc/openvpn/ and edit
/etc/openvpn/client.conf
to make sure the following lines are pointing to those files. If you have the files in /etc/openvpn/ you can omit the path.And you have to specify the OpenVPN server name or address. Make sure the keyword client is in the config. That’s what enables client mode.
Now start the OpenVPN client with the same templatized mechanism:
You can check status as you did on the server:
On the server log an incoming connection looks like the following.
You can see client name and source address as well as success/failure messages.
You can see client name and source address as well as success/failure messages.
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And you can check on the client if it created a tun0 interface:
Check if you can ping the OpenVPN server:
Note
The OpenVPN server always uses the first usable IP address in the client network and only that IP is pingable. E.g. if you configured a /24 for the client network mask, the .1 address will be used. The P-t-P address you see in the
ip addr
output above is usually not answering ping requests.Check out your routes:
First trouble shooting
If the above didn’t work for you, check this:
- Check your
journal -xe
- Check that you have specified the keyfile names correctly in client and server conf files
- Can the client connect to the server machine? Maybe a firewall is blocking access? Check journal on server.
- Client and server must use same protocol and port, e.g. UDP port 1194, see port and proto config option
- Client and server must use same config regarding compression, see comp-lzo config option
- Client and server must use same config regarding bridged vs routed mode, see server vs server-bridge config option
Advanced configuration
Advanced routed VPN configuration on server
The above is a very simple working VPN. The client can access services on the VPN server machine through an encrypted tunnel. If you want to reach more servers or anything in other networks, push some routes to the clients. E.g. if your company’s network can be summarized to the network 192.168.0.0/16, you could push this route to the clients. But you will also have to change the routing for the way back - your servers need to know a route to the VPN client-network.
The example config files that we have been using in this guide are full of all these advanced options in the form of a comment and a disabled configuration line as an example.
Note
Please read the OpenVPN hardening security guide for further security advice.
Advanced bridged VPN configuration on server
OpenVPN can be setup for either a routed or a bridged VPN mode. Sometimes this is also referred to as OSI layer-2 versus layer-3 VPN. In a bridged VPN all layer-2 frames - e.g. all ethernet frames - are sent to the VPN partners and in a routed VPN only layer-3 packets are sent to VPN partners. In bridged mode all traffic including traffic which was traditionally LAN-local like local network broadcasts, DHCP requests, ARP requests etc. are sent to VPN partners whereas in routed mode this would be filtered.
Prepare interface config for bridging on server
First, use netplan to configure a bridge device using the desired ethernet device.
Static IP addressing is highly suggested. DHCP addressing can also work, but you will still have to encode a static address in the OpenVPN configuration file.
The next step on the server is to configure the ethernet device for promiscuous mode on boot. To do this, ensure the networkd-dispatcher package is installed and create the following configuration script.
Then add the following contents.
Prepare server config for bridging
Edit
/etc/openvpn/server.conf
to use tap rather than tun and set the server to use the server-bridge directive:After configuring the server, restart openvpn by entering:
Prepare client config for bridging
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The only difference on the client side for bridged mode to what was outlined above is that you need to edit
/etc/openvpn/client.conf
and set tap
mode:Openvpn Access Server Download
Finally, restart openvpn:
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You should now be able to connect to the full remote LAN through the VPN.
References
- Snap’ed version of openvpn easy-openvpn
- Debians OpenVPN Guide