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Luke
Asked: 2015-01-12 20:58:43 +0800 CST

Restarting OpenVPN server causes connected clients to stall

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I have a small OpenVPN based network tying together a bunch of VPS's and I noticed that when I add a new client and restart the OpenVPN server to expose the IP address of the new client, the already connected clients will stall for 1 to 2 mins after which they will be able to see the OpenVPN server again.

The way I tested this is by having my already connected VPN clients to ping the VPN server (ping 10.8.0.1). When I add a new client I create a file containing the IP address of the new client in the ccd/newclient file. E.g:

ifconfig-push 10.8.0.5 10.8.0.6

After doing this I restart my OpenVPN server with service openvpn restart. At this point the new client is pretty much able to see the server immediately, but the already connected clients will stall for 1 to 2 minutes after which they will start pinging again.

I tried using service openvpn reload on the VPN server instead but the behaviour seems to be the same.

What is the best way to add a new client to an existing OpenVPN network without impacting the already existing clients in the network?

ubuntu

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    In my experience, it is not necessary to restart OpenVPN for a new client file in the client config dir. Indeed, from the man page:

    One of the useful properties of this option is that it allows client configuration files to be conveniently created, edited, or removed while the server is live, without needing to restart the server

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