[plug] Working from home - VPN routers

[Kevin Shackleton]

Hi All,

We managed to set up an openvpn solution, using an ASUS DSL-AC68U router.
This runs what looks like a slightly customised DD-WRT firmware.

Setting up openvpn on the router and setting up openvpn client on Windows
hosts are straightforward tasks.

I'm having trouble getting openvpn to work in Ubuntu 18.04.  To set up a
client using the Network Manager dialogs I could not simply refer to the
config file that the router generated, but had to write out the ca cert,
the user cert and the user private key as separate files.  Regardless of if
I use Network Manager or the command line

   sudo openvpn --config /etc/openvpn/client.ovpn

I'm running into this error in syslog:

   link_config: autonegotiation is unset or enabled, the speed and duplex
are not writable.

According to the syslog, the openvpn command line actually uses
NetworkManager, so it's not surprising they both fail.

Any ideas about autonegotiation not being writable?  I'm thinking that
perhaps a scratch folder has not been created?

Thanks,

Kevin.

On Sat, 28 Mar 2020 at 18:58, Kevin Shackleton <krshackleton at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi All,
>
> We are, like many businesses, working from home as much as possible - I
> have not been in-office for the last fortnight.
>
> Up to this time we have not bothered with an office router that "does a
> VPN".  Now a need has arisen and the business owner bought a D-Link
> DIR-895L/R, connected to our NBN modem.  This device offers "QuickVPN",
> using a pre-shared key.  As a router it's working fine (though it lacks
> SIP, we will add on a Cisco ATA)
>
> So far we have not been able to make the VPN gateway work, from Windows or
> Linux clients.  We're getting authentication failures, though we have tried
> all sorts of combinations of protocols.
>
> I'm interested in ideas and words of experience on the subject:
>  - any chance the modem is affecting the VPN?
>  - comments on the selected device (is anyone using "QuickVPN"?) and
> recommended alternative devices
>  - comments on re-flashing the device to DD-WRT which D-Links says is
> supported.  My main concern with a re-flashing is that the wi-fi may lose
> some of its capabilities - not really a big worry.
>  - thoughts about if a VPN using a PSK is really adequate these days, or
> if we should not re-flash and start using openVPN with large certificates
>
> Regards,
> Kevin.
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.plug.org.au/pipermail/plug/attachments/20200411/1abb3b9d/attachment.html>