Unable to start OpenVPN server – get “Options error: Unrecognized option..."
Posted: Sat Feb 04, 2023 7:27 pm
Unable to start OpenVPN server – get “Options error: Unrecognized option or missing or extra parameter(s) in ..\config\server.ovpn:78: ca (2.6.0). Use –help for more information.
1) Unable to determine what :78 is – guessing line number, but there’s nothing but a blank line there. Tried guessing that it was only counting non-blank lines (the sample config has every other line blank) and the nearest actual config line was dh “C:\\Program Files\\OpenVPN\\easy-rsa\\pki\\dh.pem”. Verified that dh.pem exists at that path and I did run ./easyrsa gen-dh from the easy-ras shell (date/time stamp on dh.pem confirms).
2) Verified other edited config value that they point to correct locations, such as:
ca “C:\\Program Files\\OpenVPN\\easy-rsa\\pki\\ca.crt”
cert “C:\\Program Files\\OpenVPN\\easy-rsa\\pki\\issued\\ServerVPN.crt”
key “C:\\Program Files\\OpenVPN\\easy-rsa\\pki\\private\\ServerVPN.key” # This file should be kept secret
tls-auth “C:\\Program Files\\OpenVPN\\easy-rsa\\pki\\private\\ta.key” 0 # This file is secret
3) Don't know if this is relevant, but while attempting to figure out what line # it was referring to, tried to eliminate the blank lines and that resulted in "Options error: In server.ovpn:1: Maximum option line length (256) exceeded, line starts with ################################################# (this refers to the first line in the file). Was forced to restore the blank lines (?!)
1) Unable to determine what :78 is – guessing line number, but there’s nothing but a blank line there. Tried guessing that it was only counting non-blank lines (the sample config has every other line blank) and the nearest actual config line was dh “C:\\Program Files\\OpenVPN\\easy-rsa\\pki\\dh.pem”. Verified that dh.pem exists at that path and I did run ./easyrsa gen-dh from the easy-ras shell (date/time stamp on dh.pem confirms).
2) Verified other edited config value that they point to correct locations, such as:
ca “C:\\Program Files\\OpenVPN\\easy-rsa\\pki\\ca.crt”
cert “C:\\Program Files\\OpenVPN\\easy-rsa\\pki\\issued\\ServerVPN.crt”
key “C:\\Program Files\\OpenVPN\\easy-rsa\\pki\\private\\ServerVPN.key” # This file should be kept secret
tls-auth “C:\\Program Files\\OpenVPN\\easy-rsa\\pki\\private\\ta.key” 0 # This file is secret
3) Don't know if this is relevant, but while attempting to figure out what line # it was referring to, tried to eliminate the blank lines and that resulted in "Options error: In server.ovpn:1: Maximum option line length (256) exceeded, line starts with ################################################# (this refers to the first line in the file). Was forced to restore the blank lines (?!)