OpenVPN Sophos compatibility

jijawm@hotmail.com

I have a client that sent me a Sophos vpn bundle that gives me access to his network. It uses OpenVPN, openvpn-gui.exe. Now I have another client with an OpenVPN setup, requires the TAP-Windows adpator to be renamed to NETGEAR-VPN.
Anyway, when I installed the second client it broke the Sophos client...
I now have TWO Tap adaptors, one is Local Area Connection 4 and the other is NETGEAR-VPN. I got this far by uninstalling both OpenVPN and Sophos, reinstalling Sophos, then installing only the TAP adaptor during the OpenVPN install and renaming it to NETGEAR-VPN

I feel I'm really close. I can double click on the .ovpn file under the config directory associated with the new client and it runs a script that looks as if it successfully makes a connection (and a pretty messy occurenence of command line).

How does one set up multiple vpn access using OpenVPN and resolve the conflicts? It seems that Sophos hijacks registry entries reserved for OpenVPN.
Any suggestions?

Traffic

Install OpenVPN upto date version from:
http://openvpn.net/index.php/download/community-downloads.html

This installs the TUN/TAP driver for windows.

To connect to openvpn server, the only files you need from your "bundles" are the openvpn client config files.

You need as many TAP drivers installed as VPN clients you intend to use at the same time.
See: Windows Start Menu>Tap Windows to install more TAP drivers.

If the two servers you connect to both use the same subnet (eg: 10.8.0.0/24) then you can only connect to one at a time.

For further help please post your config and log files.

We cannot debug your installation "bundles" ...

jijawm@hotmail.com

Any suggestions how to organize the multiple config directories?
I have, e.g.
C:\Program Files\WheelOpenVPN\Wheel SSL VPN Client\config
and
C:\Program Files\Sophos\Sophos\Sophos SSL VPN Client\config
But how do I start them up? They are on different subnets. Sophos requires user/password and Wheel doesn't.
When I type "openvpn-gui.exe" in the Run box it starts up the Sophos connection.

jijawm@hotmail.com

It seems that openvpngui.exe has registry entries that cause it to pull a specific configuration. How do I set it so that it give me choices for which client I want to connect.

jijawm@hotmail.com

Figured it out, sort of. Need to navigate to the .ovpn file. Right click on it. Then select "Start SSL VPN Connection" This way any registry entries that hijack the start-up of OpenVPN-GUI.exe are bypassed. It opens the vpn connection in a command shell, but at least it works.

JW0914

While a few months old, it's important to ensure it's accurately answered...

Opening the OpenvVPN GUI should not cause it to autoload a VPN profile, unless that profile is the only profile listed in the OpenVPN config directory (C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\config).

Once a second config file is added to the config directory, OpenVPN no longer auto loads a connection and waits for the end user to select one via right clicking on the OpenVPN GUI notification icon and selecting the profile name. Windows requires the SSL PKCS12 cert to be saved in the same directory as the config file if the path to the certificate is not included in the ovpn config file.

I choose to make subdirectories in the config directory with the name of each VPN as the directory name in which to store the config file and .p12 cert (you can utilize separate crt, key, ca, and tls files, however a p12, combined with including the tls [via xml] in the config file, is a far more elegant way; esp since a p12 is password protected, whereas the signing key file on it's own is not)

Traffic

JW0914 wroteit's important to ensure it's accurately answered...

Opening the OpenvVPN GUI should not cause it to autoload a VPN profile, unless that profile is the only profile listed in the OpenVPN config directory (C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\config).

OpenVPN-GUI never auto-loads a profile by default, even if there is only one profile in place.

You can force openvpn-gui.exe to load a profile on startup by using --connect profile.

See:

> openvpn-gui.exe --help