Clients shortcut to server

someuser9000

Dear forum,

I have a server with VPN subnet address 10.8.0.1.
If a client wants to connect to some service on this server, for example mail,
it is configured to connect to the servers hostname, server.com.
The client therefore uses the nameserver it has received via OpenVPN push command
to resolve the public IP address of server.com.
So it does a lot of unnecessary and more insecure connection hops,
instead of directly resolving server.com to 10.8.0.1.

I would now like to have the clients resolve server.com with the VPN server IP address 10.8.0.1
during VPN connections.
I could manipulate the hosts file in the clients by some up and down scripts,
but since there are many different client types, I would rather not try that.
I could install my own DNS service on the server, which could be configured to resolve
server.com to 10.8.0.1 for the VPN subnet only.

So I am asking:
Is there a more preferable way to do this?

I understand that this is a pretty common thing to do, but I lack the wording to search for a solution
in this forum or on the Internet.

someuser9000

debbie10t wroteThis would be a simple answer:
http://openvpn.net/index.php/open-source/documentation/howto.html#redirect

Basically, when the VPN is up ALL traffic will go VIA the VPN, including web traffic; this may not be exactly what you are looking for though.

I had done that already, but:
The external nameserver was contacted through the VPN gateway for DNS resolution of the domain of
my own server hosting the VPN service. This gave the external IP, for which a complex external route was found.

I have now an internal DNS service (dnsmasq), configured to contact external DNS services for anything but
requests for the server domain. In that latter case, the VPN gateway IP is given to the clients.

But since routing all server-related traffic directly to the server is THE purpose of a VPN network,
I think there is a better solution, perhaps related to how the server's internal network is announced
to the clients...