Windows & nailed up connections

bigal.nz

Hi,

Some help please. I have a windows 8 client.

I am trying to have a nailed up connection that:

1. Starts when the user logs on: and
2. Starts minimized (no windows)

I was trying it with the openvpn-gui but are getting UAC prompts and windows coming up with logs for about 5 seconds during connection - I want to make it transparent to the user.

I made a reg key to autorun openvpn and set openvpn to be run as administrator. The problem is the reg key wont call it if its set to run as administrator and the push route fails if I don't run as admin!

I tried using the command line ala openvpn --config connect.conf - but that doesn't seem to do anything?

Is there a better way?

Thanks

-Al

maikcat

openvpn as a service maybe?

Michael

bigal.nz

Good idea.

I haven't been able to find a "howto" for running openvpn as a service on client machine and connecting to server?

Can you help?

Cheers

-Al

bigal.nz

debbie10t wroteHOWTO:
http://openvpn.net/index.php/open-source/documentation/howto.html#startup

Thanks debbie10t.

That starts a default connection (the one under \config\ as a service).

The only way I have found to see if the connection is up on windows clients is to use ipconfig, and I have been given a tip to rename the tun adapter to OpenVPN etc for clarity.

I thought for the sake of the community I would also document a few things I learnt about openvpn gui:

Openvpn seems to shop with openvpn-gui.exe - but there is a separate openvpn-gui.1.0.3.exe which has more options than the straight openvpn-gui.exe? (hide script windows etc etc).

However I could not get openvpn-gui.1.0.3.exe to work with the 64 bit version of OpenVPN - I could only get it to work with 32 bit version. I got Application Errors when trying to run openvpn-gui.1.0.3.exe from the 64 bit installation folder.

Finally creating a shortcut with target set to

"C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenVPN\bin\openvpn-gui-1.0.3.exe" --config_dir "C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenVPN\config\" --connect server.ovpn --show_balloon 0 --silent_connection 1 --show_script_window 0

Works really well. Run it as administrator and put in startup folder for auto connect at logon.

Hope this helps others.

-Al

bigal.nz

Actually I had trouble getting the shortcut to run as administrator (which it must for pushroutes) in startup

I found I had more luck using a regkey @

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run

with a key calling:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenVPN\bin\openvpn-gui-1.0.3.exe" --config_dir "C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenVPN\config\" --connect client.ovpn --show_balloon 0 --silent_connection 1 --show_script_window 0

This seems to run as admin (Win8 x 64)

-Al

bigal.nz

debbie10t wrote
bigal.nz wrotethere is a separate openvpn-gui.1.0.3.exe which has more options than the straight openvpn-gui.exe?
Not as far as I can see ...

OpenVPN-GUI-1.0.3.exe ships with OpenVPN v2.2.2 Dated 15/11/2011 (32bit only)
OpenVPN-GUI.exe (v5.0.0.0) ships with OpenVPN v2.3.2 32bit Dated 22/8/2013
OpenVPN-GUI.exe (v5.0.0.0) ships with OpenVPN v2.3.2 64bit Dated 22/8/2013

bigal.nz wrote found I had more luck using a regkey @

HKLM\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run
Nice tip .. thanks 😉

Are you suggesting that openvpn-gui is newer than openvpn-gui-1.0.3?

because look at the options in the help files:

openvpn-gui

https://www.dropbox.com/s/of9a8en7ayoswos/openvpn-gui.jpg

where as

openvpn-gui-1.0.3 has:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/c9r4qp366uofscl/openvpn-gui-1.0.03.jpg

Faaaar more options!

-Al