Openvpn: how to start at login?

[Timothy Murphy]

Marko Vojinovic wrote:

> On Sunday, 26. August 2012. 0.00.16 Timothy Murphy wrote:
>> Marko Vojinovic wrote:
>> > In what sense openvpn *doesn't* run like every other service?
>> 
>> Before systemd/systemctl came along
>> I just used to say "chkconfig openvpn on".
>> I'm just asking why I can't do the equivalent today?
>> 
>> As far as I know, one can "systemctl enable" every other service.
> 
> Well, if you take another look at the link I gave you,
> 
>   http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Openvpn#Working_with_systemd
> 
> you will see that after the server setup instructions, there are also the
> client setup instructions.

You are right, of course,
(I assumed, since the document gave instructions for starting a client,
and then went over to instructions for a server
that this was all there was.
I should have been more thorough.)

> Assuming that you have already configured keys
> and the openvpn configuration file /etc/openvpn/MyClient.conf, you might
> be interested in these particular steps:
> 
> 4. cd /lib/systemd/system
> 5. ln openvpn at .service openvpn at MyClient.service
> 6. systemctl enable openvpn at MyClient.service
> 7. systemctl start openvpn at MyClient.service
> 
> This worked for me, openvpn client service starts automatically at boot,
> and never shuts down. If it doesn't work for you, look at
> /var/log/messages and tell us what went wrong.

Yes, thank you very much.
This seems to answer my question comprehensively.

The only excuse I have is that other people must have missed this,
since various complicated suggestions have been put forward.

And I do think that this link should probably be made by default,
since the instructions for setting up an openvpn client
assume throughout that the config file is called client.conf .

Perhaps with a note in the documentation about what to do
if one is running more than one openvpn service.


-- 
Timothy Murphy  
e-mail: gayleard /at/ eircom.net
tel: +353-86-2336090, +353-1-2842366
s-mail: School of Mathematics, Trinity College Dublin