Can't hit local website from outside when openvpn client on

bparrish99

DUMB QUESTION ALERT -- either because the answer is obvious, or because it's been asked many times and I was not smart enough to find the answer. Either way, I apologize.

I got a Comcast cable modem hooked into a Netgear wifi router, with a Ubuntu web server box connected to the wifi.

I have the cable modem port forwarding 80 to Netgear, and Netgear port forwarding 80 to the Ubuntu box. Works great! You can see my websites from anywhere!

However, when I fire open a terminal window on the Ubuntu box and run openvpn on that box to connect to an (external) OpenVPN server (for unrelated work nonsense), incoming port 80 connections stop successfully hitting the web server.

Is there a way to get around this issue? Or am I only having the issue because I've done everything horribly, horribly wrong?

Thank you for your patience and forgiveness. 😉

Traffic

bparrish99 wroteI have the cable modem port forwarding 80 to Netgear, and Netgear port forwarding 80 to the Ubuntu box. Works great! You can see my websites from anywhere!

Great 🙂

bparrish99 wrotewhen I fire open a terminal window on the Ubuntu box and run openvpn on that box to connect to an (external) OpenVPN server (for unrelated work nonsense), incoming port 80 connections stop successfully hitting the web server.

they probably still hit your server but the (external) OpenVPN server is probably re-directing your default gateway and so your ubuntu box sends replies to the wrong route.