recently, i was travelling and had my win7 netbook with me. to my surprise, i was able to connect home using openvpn, and be assigned an IP by my dhcp server. it turns out that my config does work so that i hand out dynamic addresses, and the ddns updates that i have setup in dhcp/dns occur. i am greatly pleased to have this working for windows, and possibly linux though the linux piece has not been tested yet.
my concern is around android. in the openvpn man page, i find this in the --server-bridge directive notes:
Note that only clients that support the binding of a dhcp client with the TAP adapter (such as Windows) can support this mode.
when i connect to openvpn using my android device (htc inspire 4g, android 2.3.5 (Android Revolution ROM) rooted, openvpn settings 0.4.14) everything works up to the point where the connection configs are pushed to the phone, and an IP should be assigned. i do not get an IP assigned by dhcp and the tunnel never actually completes.
i am pretty convinced at this point that the version of openvpn i am running or the version of kernel driver i have for openvpn is the issue and that is why i cannot pull an IP. i have a couple of questions around getting past this with workarounds or a newer phone and openvpn settings version.
first, the workarounds. what options do i have? i want to keep dhcp with ddns updates, therefore TAP is a requirement. could i run openvpn wtih a second port for my phone or other devices that do not support dhcp assignment? would i be able to run one instance with two "listeners", each on a different port? would running two instances be necessary to get the two ports/configs working? what would some of the great minds here do, if they were going to try to support this?
next, newer device and/or openvpn settings version. do newer devices, android kernels or versions of the openvpn settings app have a driver / kernel object that supports the binding of the dhcp client with the TAP adapter? would exercising an upgrade to a newer phone, with a newer android version and the latest version of openvpn get me past this issue?
thanks in advance.
