OpenVPN Support Forum

I have spent the last two hours on this forum going through all the permutations of trying to get my Ipad to work with opvn profiles that call external ca or key files. I have embedded the contents of those files within my config files, but I am getting the error: "Polar SSL error parsing config private key. ...."

I don't have the expertise to generate a separate set of PK12 keys so what are my options? I am using the lastest version of IOS on my Ipad and OpenVPN version 1.0.1. I have successfully used OpenVPN with VPNBOOK, but I would like to use my paid VPN provider which has external files that it calls while executing the profile file.

It's possible that you are hitting the PKCS#8 private key issue.

If your private key begins with

-----BEGIN ENCRYPTED PRIVATE KEY-----

or

-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----

then it's a PKCS#8 private key.

PKCS#8 private keys were not supported by PolarSSL (the SSL library used by OpenVPN Connect) until 1.2.8.

The upcoming OpenVPN Connect for iOS version 1.0.2 will support PolarSSL 1.2.8 and PKCS#8 private keys.

If you have an Android device, you can get a sneak-preview of this capability with the newly released OpenVPN Connect for Android version 1.1.12 which is built with PolarSSL 1.2.8.

James