OPENVPN Connect Mac Safari not working

toggee

Hi,

I have configured my Synology NAS and can connect via the OpenVPN Connect app from my Macbook Pro and chrome works fine but Safari wont load any pages?

Any ideas?

Andrew

openvpn_inc

Hello toggee/Andrew,

Pretty hard to say without any further details. I'm guessing it's the simple case of a DNS server being pushed that just doesn't work right, and Chrome might be able to work around that while Safari can't. Really hard to say without any further details. You could check the client side log to see if a DNS server is being pushed. You could check Synology configuration if pushing a DNS server can be switched off or if you can push a custom DNS server that works properly in the circumstances that matter.

Kind regards,
Johan

TomasHamal

Hello,

we're having the similar problem with safari, we are running OpenVPN on an Ubuntu server, and the problems does not look to me as relevant to DNS. Other browser work as expected. So I am trying to debug this issue.

Till now I found, that something blocks the request from processing and I am searching for some relevant information using wireshark:

There are now entries in OpenVPN log, on server or client.

I doubt it is a OpenVPN problem, rather in Safari, but we need to find a cause and report it to the corresponding party

CamilaVernalha

I am having the same problem. Chrome still working but safari stops. When I turn off my VPN, safari works again.

Mac M1 - ventura with a VPN client to site

mrd

Similar issue upon updating OpenVPN Connect from 2.something on Catalina to 3.4.1 on Monterey - Intel-based. Not sure if problem started after upgrading from Catalina to Monterey while still on 2.something or after upgrading to Monterey and then to 3.4.1. Now, when in VPN with all traffic configured to go through VPN server on Asus router, Safari no longer successfully browses the internet - Chrome continues to work fine.

openvpn_inc

Hello,

I'm repeating my advice to check your DNS configuration. For example open a terminal and try ping google.com and ping 8.8.8.8. If 8.8.8.8 pings correctly but google.com doesn't resolve, it looks like DNS got messed up. And that's probably a misconfiguration on the server side, it may be pushing a DNS server to the client that breaks things. It's possible that under certain circumstances Chrome is able to work around this while Safari is not.

Kind regards,
Johan

mrd

mrd wrote Similar issue upon updating OpenVPN Connect from 2.something on Catalina to 3.4.1 on Monterey - Intel-based. Not sure if problem started after upgrading from Catalina to Monterey while still on 2.something or after upgrading to Monterey and then to 3.4.1. Now, when in VPN with all traffic configured to go through VPN server on Asus router, Safari no longer successfully browses the internet - Chrome continues to work fine.

Just an update, life too short to figure out DNS issues, downgraded back to OpenVPN Connect 2.7.1 and all is fine. I should also add that when running OpenVPN Connect version v3, in addition to the web-browsing issue on Mac, on both my Win11 machine and Mac Monterey, despite having the VPN server configured to force all traffic through the VPN, both private network and public internet, the tunnel was not following the server rules. Internet traffic was heading out from the client computer direct to the internet, not via the VPN. Weird. Perhaps the old Asus OpenVPN server and latest OpenVPN Connect client application just don't play well together.

jdtn

Another update: I had the same problem on Macbook under Somona 14.5 with OpenVPN 3.4.9: Safari won't load any pages, Chrome works well, ping google.com doesn't work but ping 8.8.8.8 yes.
Few hours later I figured out that I had forgotten another VPN connected in the background before OpenVPN (Proton VPN) that was messing up with my connection. Im even surprised that Chrome worked in that setting. So I just terminated the Proton VPN connection, and OpenVPN worked well again, with Safari and the terminal.
So you may check all your VPN connexions in the MacOS settings in such situation...