"auto dns" with dynamic IP addressing

tontonjab

Hello all,

I come here few times ago with a problem with no automatic reconnection with my client.
You point that it what the
#persist-key
#persist-tun
options that make the client not able to reconnect. It works fin now, but... IP change at almost every reconnection.
Is there an easy way to assign some... sort of DNS name ?

TinCanTech

You must be using openvpn with --user and/or --group

tontonjab

Ok, the doc (https://openvpn.net/community-resources/reference-manual-for-openvpn-2-4/)

i read:
--user user
Change the user ID of the OpenVPN process to user after initialization, dropping privileges in the process. This option is useful to protect the system in the event that some hostile party was able to gain control of an OpenVPN session. Though OpenVPN's security features make this unlikely, it is provided as a second line of defense.By setting user to nobody or somebody similarly unprivileged, the hostile party would be limited in what damage they could cause. Of course once you take away privileges, you cannot return them to an OpenVPN session. This means, for example, that if you want to reset an OpenVPN daemon with a SIGUSR1 signal (for example in response to a DHCP reset), you should make use of one or more of the --persist options to ensure that OpenVPN doesn't need to execute any privileged operations in order to restart (such as re-reading key files or running ifconfig on the TUN device).

They talk about --persist and... issue if i not use it. But... i am not using it. Is it ok ?
If i put
user blablabla
in the conf, i should be able to ping with:
ping blablabla

As simple as this ?

TinCanTech

You should also read --ifconfig-pool-persist and --client-config-dir

tontonjab

Ok... TinCanTech...

--ifconfig-pool-persist seems to be the option i need but... this option needs --persist-tun. And precisly, --persist-tun was the problem ! If i use it, my client stops to auto reconnect 🙁.

Can you explain a bit if possible ? Sorry if it bothers you ...

TinCanTech

--ifconfig-pool-persist does not require --persist-tun.

tontonjab

ok, so i added:

ifconfig-pool-persist /etc/openvpn/ipp.txt
and doc said:

file is a comma-delimited ASCII file, formatted as <Common-Name>,<IP-address>.

<Common-Name> is affected inside the client.conf file ?

TinCanTech

You should try http://pivpn.io - It works on most Linux, regardless of Pi.

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

tontonjab

https://github.com/angristan/openvpn-install
I already use this... but the problem is that is masks lot of things...

So, if you point me to this kind of tool, i must understand that i am doing it wrong ?
I am not on a raspberry, i work with 4g gateway. I have already 6 gateways deployed 🙁. I can't reroll all conf.
If its to hard to do, i have to understand why. To me, i want to affect user to clients, and them, map them inside the ipp.txt.
I just want to check if its the way