Newbie Question

Scripts to manage certificates or generate config files

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Thinker
OpenVpn Newbie
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Oct 07, 2016 8:50 pm

Newbie Question

Post by Thinker » Sat Sep 11, 2021 9:04 pm

Forgive me but I have been using a private VPN for a while, where I only need to put the username and password into my connection dialogue on Windows and all is good. I wanted to connect a non-Windows device (that dosn't have a client) to the VPN, so I bought one of those routers that has an OpenVPN client. The client wants way more than username/password and expects me to know lots of detail that would be in an .ovpn file, like cipher types, Certificate Authority, Certificate, and Private Keys. Well, I figured out how to capture the cert that Windows was being issued when I log in on Windows, but what about the other stuff I need to build the .ovpn file? I just use a username and password (so I assume the browser did all this key protocol and exchange in the background without me knowing it). Now apparently I have to know it all since the router isn't capable of doing what the browser does in the background. Am I able to get this all from the server since I have login info (or can I capture anything from log files)? Just confused as to how to get this openVPN client setup if I only ever used a browser (this isn't a commercial VPN where they have user guides, this is just a private one set up by a friend but he doesn't know all this either -- but it has always worked to let me remote in via Windows)

TinCanTech
OpenVPN Protagonist
Posts: 11137
Joined: Fri Jun 03, 2016 1:17 pm

Re: Newbie Question

Post by TinCanTech » Sat Sep 11, 2021 9:59 pm

You need to understand how things work.

Your router, openvpn, how to write a config file .. loads of stuff.

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