OpenVPN Support Forum

My long-running server, serving multiple clients, had persist-key and persist-tun enabled. The latest iOS app has decided to refuse connecting with those settings. I tried removing those settings, but the app continues to refuse to connect (as well as all my other clients), and the app gives absolutely no information why:

[Oct 11, 2023, 20:06:37] START CONNECTION

[Oct 11, 2023, 20:06:37] ----- OpenVPN Start -----
OpenVPN core 3.8.2connect1 ios arm64 64-bit

[Oct 11, 2023, 20:06:37] OpenVPN core 3.8.2connect1 ios arm64 64-bit

[Oct 11, 2023, 20:06:37] Frame=512/2112/512 mssfix-ctrl=1250

[Oct 11, 2023, 20:06:37] NOTE: This configuration contains options that were not used:

[Oct 11, 2023, 20:06:37] UNKNOWN/UNSUPPORTED OPTIONS

[Oct 11, 2023, 20:06:37] 15 [status] [openvpn-status.log]

[Oct 11, 2023, 20:06:37] EVENT: CORE_THREAD_ERROR option_error: sorry, unsupported options present in configuration: UNKNOWN/UNSUPPORTED OPTIONS [ERR]

[Oct 11, 2023, 20:06:37] EVENT: CORE_THREAD_DONE

[Oct 11, 2023, 20:06:37] EVENT: DISCONNECT_PENDING

[Oct 11, 2023, 20:06:37] Raw stats on disconnect:


[Oct 11, 2023, 20:06:37] Performance stats on disconnect:
CPU usage (microseconds): 33827
Network bytes per CPU second: 0
Tunnel bytes per CPU second: 0

Can you roll this back, or allow me to override?

Hello,

The 'status' directive is designed to write a file to disk that contains the current status of the OpenVPN connection. Since you're using an OpenVPN client that already show you this, this directive makes absolutely no point to have, especially on iOS. I don't think you even have the ability to just randomly write some file on iOS filesystem and do anything useful with it even if it did succeed in that. To be honest I'm a bit confused why that is even in your config file, it's not a very common thing to put in.

I would highly recommend that you remove the 'status' directive from your client config profile. Then you should be able to connect just fine again.

To get status of your connection just look at your OpenVPN Connect app to see what the current status is.

ps: I think persist-tun and persist-key may actually be ignored and it will try to continue anyway. But the status item is the problem.

Kind regards,
Johan