Question: Multiple 'remote' in client and use of 'ping' and 'ping-retart'

NiMing8

Question on failover usage in OpenVPN client.conf file with the 'ping' and 'ping-remote' parameters.
Presently, I have this in my client.conf file:

client
remote ServerA
remote ServerB
verb 2
nobind
mute 20
dev tun
persist-tun
persist-key
key-direction 1
cipher AES-256-CBC
auth sha512
tls-version-min 1.2
ns-cert-type server
mute-replay-warnings
resolv-retry 60

But it is not failing over, even after thousands of dropped packets:

tun0      Link encap:UNSPEC  HWaddr 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
          inet addr:10.8.0.6  P-t-P:10.8.0.5  Mask:255.255.255.255
          UP POINTOPOINT RUNNING NOARP MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:13181202 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:4816286 errors:0 dropped:148158 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:100
          RX bytes:270963803 (258.4 MiB)  TX bytes:311358035 (296.9 MiB)

I've read in the ManPage that using ping and ping-restart is a way to detect a lost connection and 'restart' OpenVPN. However, I don't think I want to restart OpenVPN, I just want it to failover to the next server in the list (or start back at the beginning if on the last server).
Any advice, or clarification, on how to do this? Maybe ping and ping-restart are not the correct commands?

TinCanTech

Try with --remap-usr1 SIGHUP and --remote-random

Also, --mtu-test

NiMing8

TinCanTech wrote Try with --remap-usr1 SIGHUP and --remote-random

Also, --mtu-test

Thank you!
I will test with these settings:

ping 30
ping-restart 60
remote-random
remap-usr1 SIGHUP

I'm not sure user mtu-test will help, as the initial connection is good with no lost packets, it just degrades over time - at which point I need it to fail-over to the next server. So I don't think mtu-test will help as it appears to only apply on the initial connection to the server.
The way I understand the above setting will work is:
1. If no activity for 30 seconds, it will ping the server.
2. If after 60 seconds of no ping responses, it will restart without persistence.
3. remote-random will possibly select a different server on restart

Let me know if I'm not understanding it correctly.

TinCanTech

NiMing8 wrote the initial connection is good with no lost packets, it just degrades over time

This does not make sense to me ..

I suggest you set verb 4 in your configs and then post your logs to show any problems.

NiMing8

I climbed out of this rabbit hole and implemented iproute2 load balancing across multiple openvpn client connections and it works wonderfully.