ios as a hotspot - no vpn connection to hotspot client running openvpn server

[ciekawy]

Hey here!

I have a setup as follows. iOS device acts as a hotspot. MacOS connects to that hotspot (and is visible as some-mac.local) and there is an openvpn running on the MacOS. I'd like to connect from iOS with OpenVPN to the openvpn server on MacOS but getting the connection timeout.

other net apps on iOS can ping and even ssh to some-mac.local. With tcpdump I can see packets coming from an iOS to some-mac.local, but no packets are coming from the OpenVPN app (tried both udp and tcp), in the OpenVPN logs some-mac.local resolves correctly to the direct IP of a hotspot connnection - same which is working with ping, ssh etc....

When both mac and iOS device both connect to external hotspot, the OpenVPN connection from iOS to some-mac.local (same config) is working withouth issues.

all this seems to me like OpenVPN client for iOS is not reflecting the local hotspot interface on which other peers are connected.

I need this configuration to be able to to expose dockerized openvpn + dnsmasq + nginx SSL proxy and then test locally developed application expecting SSL connection to particular locally defined hostname.

appreciate any hints on this.

Regards!
Szymon