Setup OpenVPN

Ask Fedora
,
1

Is there a reliable, recent resource how to setup OpenVPN on Fedora 44. Searching gives me all kind of out of date advice.

I have ca.crt, client.crt and client.pem as well as user/password and gateway ip. but get “Failed to activate” in NetworkManager. Yet on another laptop with the same F44 it works fine.

2

I’ll try to help with the little supplied info,
Is this installed first:

 rpm -q openvpn 
openvpn-2.7.8-1.fc45.x86_64

### More info
 
Name         : openvpn
Version      : 2.7.8
Release      : 1.fc45
Architecture : x86_64
Size         : 1.9 M
Source       : openvpn-2.7.8-1.fc45.src.rpm
Repository   : @System
Summary      : A full-featured TLS VPN solution
URL          : https://community.openvpn.net/
License      : GPL-2.0-only
Description  : OpenVPN is a robust and highly flexible tunneling application that uses all
             : of the encryption, authentication, and certification features of the
             : OpenSSL library to securely tunnel IP networks over a single UDP or TCP
             : port.  It can use the Marcus Franz Xaver Johannes Oberhumers LZO library
             : for compression.

If it is a commercial VPN can you provide the Name/Company.

3

Have you tried opening the Network Manager in KDE, clicking the + at the bottom of the panel, selecting OpenVPN from the modal and filling in your locations for your certificates?

image
image795×810 61 KB

4

The location of the certificates is critical because of SELinux. The easiest way to check is activating the connection after “sudo setenforce 0”. If the connection succeeds, you have to check for SELinux errors. Then use “sudo setenforce 1” to reactivate SELinux.

In your home folder, certificates may be stored in:

.pki
.cert
.local/share/networkmanagement/certificates
.kde/share/apps/networkmanagement/certificates

Certificates there should get the SELinux label “unconfined_u:object_r:home_cert_t:s0”, at least after “restorecon”. Check with “ls -Z”

Check the logs with “journalctl -b -t nm-openvpn” for other problems. The nm-openvpn program which is used has a reduced set of capabilities leading to possible “permission denied” errors.

5

Hello John,

normally the information on how to setup OpenVPN should come from the people setting up the server, most often in the form of a .ovpn file. Because there are a million different ways to configure the server it is impossible to give a comprehensive guide!

In my experience, a carefully crafted .ovpn configuration will work 100% of the time with the standard networkmanager plugin

dnf install NetworkManager-openvpn

Kind regards