I’m trying to create a VPN connection from a set of files created by IPFire. There are two files: .p12 and .ovpn
The .ovpn file includes a line that openvpn apparently doesn’t like: pkcs12 filename.p12. Fair enough, perhaps IPFire follows an older standard or something. But the error message that appears is something else.
The error message says the VPN connection can’t be imported, so far so good, but then says (I’m translating from another language so the message in English may be different) the key file includes the line “tls-client” which is not a key-value pair, a group or a comment. In other words, the error message is completely useless, because there’s nothing wrong with the “tls-client” line, it’s the “pkcs12” line that’s the problem.
What’s worse, the only button on the error message is OK and it does nothing. After a while, the Gnome “Settings is not responding” box comes out and the only thing that can be done is forcing the whole gnome settings window to close.
The config file (.ovpn) is likely different between ipfire and openvpn.
Have you tried moving that file as a backup then creating a completely new connection?
It seems likely that the filename.p12 file may be the issue.
If I change the line pkcs12 filename.p12 to ca filename.p12 the connection gets created. Gnome settings doesn’t even get to parse the .p12 file, it hangs on the .ovpn file.
I’m expecting the whole gnome settings window not to hang from parsing a text file?
And it’s not a given the .ovpn file is malformed, hence the question mark in the title.
Edit: actually, it’s probably not hanging from reading the .ovpn file. It’s hanging from displaying its own error message, which contains useless info to boot.
You already posted the change that solved the connection so it proved the text .ovpn file was corrupted as stated in the thread title.
When config files are corrupt the results are caused by the corruption and what we want or expect are not what happens. Why would you expect a corrupt config file to not cause problems… In your case it seems it locked things up so you had to do a forced recovery.
After all, config files are mostly text files, so don’t be flabergasted that a text config file corruption can cause a hang (otherwise known as a freeze).