Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: n952162 <n952162@×××.de>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: Re: [gentoo-user] openvpn experience, anyone?
Date: Sun, 18 Sep 2022 11:31:45
Message-Id: 148de176-c757-4d44-7ed6-f241c12681f5@web.de
In Reply to: Re: [gentoo-user] openvpn experience, anyone? by Michael
1 On 9/18/22 11:08, Michael wrote:
2 > On Sunday, 18 September 2022 08:52:13 BST William Kenworthy wrote:
3 >> On 18/9/22 15:26, n952162 wrote:
4 >>> Hello all,
5 >>>
6 >>> I want to ssh over my openvpn connection, and I can't do it, the
7 >>> connection times out.
8 >>>
9 >>> I saw a reference to gentoo in the openvpn scripts in /etc/openvpn and
10 >>> thought maybe somebody here knows something about this.
11 >>>
12 >>> Earlier my institution recommended openconnect, and I was able to use
13 >>> ssh to login in to a host with no problem.
14 >>>
15 >>> Then, for some reason (licensing?), we were switched to openvpn, which
16 >>> works for xfreerdp but not for ssh.
17 >>>
18 >>> I don't have control over the institution's firewall (but I do have for
19 >>> the host itself)
20 >>>
21 >>> Perhaps when installing the new service, they tightened up the firewall
22 >>> rules. But maybe there's a configuration screw I can turn, or ... maybe
23 >>> a USE flag?
24 >>>
25 >>> - - down-root : Enable the down-root plugin
26 >>> - - examples : Install examples, usually source code
27 >>> - - inotify : Enable inotify filesystem monitoring support
28 >>> - - iproute2 : Enabled iproute2 support instead of net-tools
29 >>> + + lz4 : Enable support for lz4 compression (as implemented in
30 >>> app-arch/lz4)
31 >>> + + lzo : Enable support for lzo compression
32 >>> - - mbedtls : Use mbed TLS as the backend crypto library
33 >>> + + openssl : Use OpenSSL as the backend crypto library
34 >>> + + pam : Add support for PAM (Pluggable Authentication Modules)
35 >>> - DANGEROUS to
36 >>> arbitrarily flip
37 >>> - - pkcs11 : Enable PKCS#11 smartcard support
38 >>> + + plugins : Enable the OpenVPN plugin system
39 >>> - - systemd : Enable use of systemd-specific libraries and features
40 >>> like socket
41 >>> activation or session tracking
42 >>> - - test : Enable dependencies and/or preparations necessary to
43 >>> run tests
44 >>> (usually controlled by FEATURES=test but can be
45 >>> toggled independently)
46 >>>
47 >>> TIA
48 >> ssh and openvpn work well together. However I am doing most of the work
49 >> using my own configs - gentoo tries to be too clever with its vpn
50 >> networking and Ive never been able to get it to work
51 >> reliably/acceptably. On some sites I have to use port 443 (https) to
52 >> get through, and in extreme cases double wrap in ssl (using a mix of
53 >> proxytunnel (windows host), stunnel and sslh) to disguise its a vpn but
54 >> still separate it from regular https traffic on my firewall. You will
55 >> need to figure out where the ssh is getting blocked/stripped out - is
56 >> openvpn your endpoint or theirs?
57 >>
58 >> BillK
59 > Could it also be an issue with MTU being too large? It should be easy to test
60 > with:
61 >
62 > ping -c 1 -v -M do -s 1464 <IP_address>
63 >
64 > and decrease the packet size until gets through. Then configure your client
65 > accordingly:
66 >
67 > https://community.openvpn.net/openvpn/wiki/271-i-can-ping-through-the-tunnel-but-any-real-work-causes-it-to-lock-up-is-this-an-mtu-problem
68 >
69
70 That was a good idea!  Unfortunately, in this case it wasn't the cause:
71
72 -- ping  statistics ---
73 1 packets transmitted, 1 received, 0% packet loss, time 0ms
74 rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 331.754/331.754/331.754/0.000 ms