I am not sure how to proceed with troubleshooting and have tried a number of things. Below is server conf and client conf. Just a note: the client does successfully connect to the server - they just cannot route via DNS to server.cgsmith.comI tested the VPN by changing my router's default ip address. Tested with all the IPs below. It all works for my config. and routes to server.cgsmith.com
192.168.0.1/32
192.168.1.1/32
192.168.2.1/32
192.168.3.1/32
10.8.0.1/32
Unless something was cached? I did confirm my computer's IP address was set properly and that a google.com query worked.
server.conf
local 192.168.0.20
port 1194
proto udp
dev tun
ca ca.crt
cert server.crt
key server.key
dh dh.pem
# Network topology
topology subnet
server 10.8.0.0 255.255.255.0
ifconfig-pool-persist ipp.txt
# back to the OpenVPN server.
push "route 192.168.0.0 255.255.252.0"
# server.cgsmith.com that openvpn customers need access to
push "route 103.x.x.x 255.255.255.255"
# local routes - not sure why these are in our config
push "route 192.168.10.0 255.255.255.0"
push "route 192.168.12.0 255.255.255.0"
# i tried to push the direct route to my server down which did not work
#push "route server.cgsmith.com 255.255.255.255"
push "dhcp-option DNS 8.8.8.8"
keepalive 10 120
auth SHA512
tls-crypt tc.key
cipher AES-256-CBC
user nobody
group nogroup
persist-key
persist-tun
status /var/log/openvpn/openvpn-status.log
verb 3
crl-verify crl.pem
explicit-exit-notify
management localhost 7505
client-cgsmith.ovpn
client
dev tun
proto udp
remote vpn.cgsmith.com 1194
resolv-retry infinite
nobind
persist-key
persist-tun
remote-cert-tls server
auth SHA512
cipher AES-256-CBC
ignore-unknown-option block-outside-dns
# sometimes commenting block-outside-dns works... other times not
block-outside-dns
verb 3