Client Authentication without Certificates

harry.vasanth

Hello everyone,

I've been trying to get my OVPN server work without client-side certificate verification.

My server.conf contains the following:

# Ports & protocols
port 1194
proto udp
dev tun

# Server certs and keys
ca /etc/openvpn/keys/ca.crt
cert /etc/openvpn/keys/server.crt
key /etc/openvpn/keys/server.key # This file should be kept secret
dh /etc/openvpn/keys/dh2048.pem

# Server subnet
server 198.18.200.0 255.255.255.0

# Persist IP lease pool
ifconfig-pool-persist ipp.txt

# Pushing to a private subnet
push "route 192.168.10.234 255.255.255.0"

# Allowing duplicate common names for clients (no keys/certs)
duplicate-cn

# KeepAlive
keepalive 10 120

# Cryptographic cipher.
cipher AES-256-CBC

# privilege downgrade fix.
persist-key
persist-tun

# Output a short status log
status openvpn-status.log

# Verbosity level 4
verb 4

# Notify the client that when the server restarts
explicit-exit-notify 1

# Add PAM Auth plugin
plugin /usr/lib/openvpn/openvpn-plugin-auth-pam.so login

# No need for client cert
client-cert-not-required

and the client.conf file contains the following

# Define Client
client

dev tun

# protocol
proto udp-client

# Server
remote abc.efg.xyz

# Service port
port 1194

# Not binding to a specific port
nobind

# Try to preserve some state across restarts.
persist-key
persist-tun

# moderate verbosity
verb 4
mute 10

# Chosen yptographic cipher.
cipher AES-256-CBC

# cipher algorithm
auth SHA1

# Username and password are stored in this file
auth-user-pass f_secret

auth-nocache

I am unable to connect to my server using this configurations.

The local and router firewall configurations seems to be fine, can someone help me with this please?

TinCanTech

harry.vasanth wrote I've been trying to get my OVPN server work without client-side certificate verification

Why :roll:

See --verify-client-cert in The Manual v24x

miljanrajkovic

Maybe you can try using OpenVPN Connect for Windows on the client side.
By using this software you can establish connection to vpn server with just username and password. No configuration and certificates required.
https://openvpn.net/client-connect-vpn-for-windows/