(SOLVED) At Wits End. Connection issue with Asus Router

[Cremator72]

I've read numerous threads and watched hours of tutorials on how to setup OpenVPN on my Asus router and use the client to connect. We've even brought in a 'Professional IT guy' who googled the same stuff I did in trying ti figure this out.
This is what the client is reporting. What am I missing?

Mon Aug 28 20:35:46 2023 SIGUSR1[soft,tls-error] received, process restarting
Mon Aug 28 20:36:02 2023 TCP/UDP: Preserving recently used remote address: [AF_INET]xxx.xxx.201.247:1194
Mon Aug 28 20:36:02 2023 UDPv4 link local: (not bound)
Mon Aug 28 20:36:02 2023 UDPv4 link remote: [AF_INET]xxx.xxx.201.247:1194
Mon Aug 28 20:36:03 2023 VERIFY ERROR: depth=1, error=self-signed certificate in certificate chain: C=TW, ST=TW, L=Taipei, O=ASUS, CN=RT-AX58U, emailAddress=me@myhost.mydomain, serial=727920763291949605502605446480025514001905266043
Mon Aug 28 20:36:03 2023 OpenSSL: error:0A000086:SSL routines::certificate verify failed:
Mon Aug 28 20:36:03 2023 TLS_ERROR: BIO read tls_read_plaintext error
Mon Aug 28 20:36:03 2023 TLS Error: TLS object -> incoming plaintext read error
Mon Aug 28 20:36:03 2023 TLS Error: TLS handshake failed
Mon Aug 28 20:36:03 2023 SIGUSR1[soft,tls-error] received, process restarting

[openvpn_inc]

Hello,

It is complaining that there is a self-signed certificate in the chain. This means that it cannot establish a path of trust to a CA it can trust. Perhaps that is because the CA is not provided so it does not have any it can trust. Or perhaps it is because the certificate was not signed by the CA it was provided. This seems to be a certificate issue.

Since this is an Asus router, this falls in community support, and specifically this would be up to Asus to support as it is their implementation of OpenVPN in their routers. They should be able to provide the correct steps to get it working properly.

Kind regards,
Johan

[Cremator72]

Thanks Johan. I thought it might be a cert issue. Unfortunately it's not something I'm familiar with on how to remedy. I've send a message to Asus support as well as posted on their subreddit. Thanks for helping narrow it down.

[Cremator72]

Closing this topic as I found the solution. Apparently when you sometimes email the OVPN config file (which contains the cert keys) it can become corrupted or un-readable when imported.
I found numerous accounts of this same issue. Once I transferred the file from the remote pc to my phone and then installed from there installed of emailing it, everything worked. Leaving this here in case anyone has this issue.