"Tunnelblick could not fetch IP address info" ERROR - Configuring VPN Server / VPN Client for China Great Firewall

cnidarian

I have OpenVPN set up on a dedicated server for VPN with Tunnelblick as my client side on my Mac and every time I connect to my VPN I get the message:

"Tunnelblick could not fetch IP address information before the connection to clientname was made."

Eventually, after a few minutes I am able to connect to the internet, but this error message is slowing down the connection process and worries me that the connection may not be very secure.

Can anybody help clarify what I need to do to get rid of the error message?

I am connecting to my server from inside mainland China and need help configuring my VPN to connect outside China.

I have a VPS with OpenVPN 2.4.7-1.e17 installed on CentOS7 with TUN activated.

I have Tunnelblick 3.8.1 (build 5400) installed on my MacBook with High Sierra 10.13.6 installed.

I set up OpenVPN on my server choosing UDP protocol and OpenDNS for DNS rendering.

My client is configured as:

client
dev tun
proto udp
remote xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx 1194
resolv-retry infinite
nobind
persist-key
persist-tun
remote-cert-tls server
auth SHA512
cipher AES-256-CBC
ignore-unknown-option block-outside-dns
block-outside-dns
verb 3
<ca>

My tunnelblick client is configured as:

Connect: Manually
Set DNS/WINS: Set nameserver
OpenVPN version: Default 2.4.7
Monitor network settings: checked
Route all IPv4 traffic through VPN: checked
Disable IPv6 unless VPN server is accessed using IPV6: checked
Check if apparent public IP address changed after connecting: checked

Advanced:
Flush DNS cache after connecting / disconnecting: checked
Allow changes to manually-set network settings: NOT checked
Set DNS after routes are set: checked

Load Tun driver automatically
Load Tap driver automatically

The DNS for my wifi connection is set to OpenDNS servers

cnidarian

I installed OpenVPN using the GitHub OpenVPN install script:

wget https://git.io/vpn -O openvpn-install.sh && bash openvpn-install.sh

which is located here:

https://github.com/Nyr/openvpn-install

I can't seem to locate the configuration file for my OpenVPN server installation but if that would be helpful and if somebody can point me to it I own the server so I can post the server configuration if necessary.

TinCanTech

Please see:
https://forums.openvpn.net/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=22603#p68963