easy-rsa with win 7 x64 and 2.3.4

[chrisathome]

OK, following very good advice I have downloaded 2.3.4 and easy-rsa from github.

I have installed openvpn ok on a clean laptop with the intention of using it as the certificate and key generator, and store copies of all the client config files I need to make.

Fallen at the first hurdle: having extracted all the zipped easy-rsa files into a temp folder, what next?

The help on the openvpn site says run init-config, so I assumed to copy the unzipped folder contents into \openvpn\easy-rsa, but that didn't work.

It's 5 years since I set my system up on 2.0.9, and I'm very confused! Is there any documentation to walk me through this step by step, and written for win 7 x64 and 2.3.4 please!

Thanks

Christopher

[Traffic]

What version of EasyRSA are you using ?

[chrisathome]

looks like version 3. found some info in a distro folder, and it looks as though I have to download additional stuff just to get easy-rsa to run - starting to get well out of my comfort zone.

[Traffic]

I have installed openvpn ok on a clean laptop

What OS is this ?

[chrisathome]

Sorry I only put that in the subject, Win 7 pro x64 fully patched

[Traffic]

Download EasyRSA3-rc2 for windows ..
https://github.com/OpenVPN/easy-rsa/releases

[chrisathome]

Ok I did that, extracted the files & folders from the zip and copied them to c:\program files\openvpn\easy-rsa and ran easyRSA Start.bat

In the EasyRSA Shell window I typed ./easyrsa init-pki and the shell reported it had created the pki directory but it hadn't, and typing ./easyrsa build-ca says easyrsa_pki does not exist.

So what am I doing wrong?

[Traffic]

You must "Runas Admin" or .. what I would do .. put EasyRSA in a sub-directory of your home directory.

[chrisathome]

Thanks, putting it in a directory off the drive root did the trick. Just one more thing.

I want to create all the keys and certificates on the laptop, which I believe isn't a problem, as it is not a machine normally associated with the vpn. The various instruction docs I have seen talk about setting a password for the key and cert generation - if I do this will clients have to put the password into openvpn before they can access the tunnel? I don't want this, (it doesn't happen now with the 2.2.2 version) so I thought I had better check before I start building. Don't want to get them all done only to find I've done it wrong!

Thanks for your help

Christopher