[resolved] Layer 2 bridging not working

seanmikhaels

Hi All!,

I am completely new to Open vpn and am wondering if someone has seen this issue or can shed some light. My current setup is as follows.

Openvpn VPN 1.6.1, vm
Openvpn desktop client 1.5.6, on windows 7 64bit
Pfsense 2.0.1, vm, (port forwarding set tcp 443, udp 1194)
esxi 5

I can access the vpn externally, clients can connect fine through layer 2 and recieve an IP from the local lan DHCP server, however, they are unable to ping anything on the remote network. Looking at the windows TAP device, i can see packets are being sent, but are not being recieved.

Thanks guys!

mmiller

Edit: I didn't realize this topic was on the Access server. My advice applies to the free, open source OpenVPN client/server and may not at all be applicable to your situation; if so I apologize, please disregard! I have no specific understanding or expertise to the Access server, and someone else will help you.

First off, most likely your pfSense firewall is default blocking all ICMP echo requests (ping, which is often confused with port 7 echo service -- ICMP is a layer 3 datagram protocol below the layer 4 TCP/UDP protocols)

Is your "OpenVPN VPN" the server? What OS are you running in the VM?

Could you please post your (filtered/truncated) configuration files for both the client and the server?
grep -vE '^\W*[#;$]|^\W*$' (filter out any blank lines, or lines that start with a #, ;, or $ as they are just comments and make it all harder to read.

Could you describe a little bit how these four systems are connected to eachother?
"Looking at the windows TAP device" - since the only system you directly specified was Windows was the client, were you referring to the client TAP? If you're seeing them get sent but not received by the server, and your firewall isn't gobbling up the pings, it's likely a routing issue on the client side. Again, posting your client/server configs will help determine whether that is the case.

seanmikhaels

Hi Guys thanks for the reply! i found the issue here http://devbios.wordpress.com/2009/07/12/openvpn-bridge-and-vmware-esx-3-5/ outlining the exact same problem that i was experiencing. I only enabled promiscuous mode on the vmnic, and it worked fined. Thanks again!

susanzb

I was having this very same problem. Thanks for finding the solution. It works for me.