Remote bridge setup, almost there but no LAN traffic

Fatboy40

I'm setting up remote bridge client for OpenVPN, it's a struggle as the business I work for has taken over another one and needs to setup a satellite site but the IT guys have gone, where I want LAN traffic broadcast at each end.

The OpenVPN server has been up and running for a long time and happily serves client VPN requests from Windows computers. I've setup a created a new Debian 7 virtual machine on VMware ESXi that will act as the bridge client at the new remote site, the small Shuttle computer running ESXi has two NIC which I've setup as separate VMware switches giving me a private and public side.

The new Debian 7 VM connects to the live OpenVPN server fine, I can see this in log files, however I'm seeing no LAN / bridged traffic on the private interface and I'm stuck on how to sort this out (I've purchased Access Server licensing to get paid support and have a support ticket open but I'm not getting replies to it).

Is anyone able to give me a some pointers as to why this may not be working as expected and I'm seeing no bridged LAN traffic on my bridge client ?.

Thanks.

Fatboy40

Well things are sort of getting better. I was using the bridge-up.sh script from here...

https://docs.openvpn.net/how-to-tutorialsguides/virtual-platforms/site-to-site-layer-2-bridging-using-openvpn-access-server/

... but have no swapped over to the one from this URL...

http://openvpn.net/index.php/open-source/documentation/miscellaneous/ethernet-bridging.html

... called bridge-start and the bridge interface on the client now appears to be working. I have a switch plugged into the south / private interface of my bridge client and the ports are blinking like crazy and a laptop plugged into it has been given a DHCP address.

However it appears that traffic is not flowing correctly over it though, in that I cannot ping anything at the main / parent site or connect to any resources there. I wonder what I'm now missing or not doing ?.

Fatboy40

As I can't seem to find a button to edit posts, but there probably is one, I thought I'd implicitly state that this is intended to be a Layer 2 bridge.