My server became the internet

Use this forum to share your VPN or network disasters. Show diagrams, traffic graphs, or whatever else you need (a video of you letting the 'smoke' out of our network gear).

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lizardlab
OpenVpn Newbie
Posts: 1
Joined: Wed Sep 16, 2015 12:49 am

My server became the internet

Post by lizardlab » Wed Sep 16, 2015 1:04 am

This is just a post of an experience I had which I think is really fitting for this forum, I'm not asking for help as this was a long time ago. Here's how it all begins, I was trying to setup a VPN server using OpenVPn on Debian. Debian being a very reliable and robust system (used to at least) provide sample configuration files for OpenVPN. I was still under 18 at the point I was setting this thing up and the physical box was at my mom's place but I was staying at my dad's place for an extended period of time (my mom was out of town). The box is headless and command-line only so I was setting this all up using SSH (very important detail). I had overwritten all the sample files and using other online resources (like the ArchWiki) I pieced together what I thought would be a working config. I put in all the necessary variables like the IP and all, but I still couldn't get the routing rule down. I ended up copying the files to the live directory of OpenVPN and I tried starting it, however I forgot I put both the client file and server file. I had put in all the details for both, and so when it ran it told me over the SSH connection that it was successful, however my terminal instance froze up. I tried reconnecting but the machine wasn't accepting any connections on any port whatsoever (I ran a lot of other services) and I realized what I did... My server believed it was the internet in its entirety. I was hoping that trying to connect through the LAN would allow me to get another SSH session going to get it working, but of course that would be too easy. I ended up having to hook it up to my monitor and delete both files in order to get the computer to respond. Lesson to be learned: never place the client and server in the same folder.

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Traffic
OpenVPN Protagonist
Posts: 4066
Joined: Sat Aug 09, 2014 11:24 am

Re: My server became the internet

Post by Traffic » Wed Sep 16, 2015 12:32 pm

I expect you enabled --redirect-gateway and ended up with an infinite routing loop ... :mrgreen:

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