[ale] OpenVPN Question

[jimpop at yahoo.com (Jim Popovitch)]

On Fri, 2006-11-03 at 16:04 -0500, John Mills wrote:
> ALErs -
> 
> I will be trying out 'openvpn-2.0.9' from a Linux laptop and have a 
> couple of questions:
> 
> 1. I have file set with certificate, etc., for the connection. Where is it 
> appropriate to save this, and with what permissions?

/etc/openvpn/  owned by root, with 0600 perms.

> 
> 2. As a client I would like to open and close the tunnel manually (by 
> screen widget for example). How can I achieve this?

I use this command from a Gnome Panel launcher:

  xterm -T "OpenVPN" -e "sudo openvpn /etc/openvpn/vpn.conf"

That will open, and keep open, an xterm that I click on and hit CTRL-C
when I want to close the vpn connection.

make sure that you set /etc/sudoers (run "visudo" as root) to properly
add "openvpn" as a command for your userid like this:

   jimpop ALL= /usr/sbin/openvpn

or like this if you don't want to be bothered for your password each
time:

   jimpop ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/openvpn

hth,

-Jim P.