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Community ▶ Questions ▶ Ubuntu, VPN, NX, and problems
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Ubuntu, VPN, NX, and problems

networking

Hey gang,

I'm not exactly a newbie, but I'm not a Linux ninja either. I have a problem and I need professional help.

I connect to my Linode remotely using NX and I run a Gnome desktop. While logged into my Linode I want to connect to a VPN. After much trial and error and fun times with Network Manager, I was finally able to get nm-applet running as a regular user, and I can see my VPN connection within the applet. The good news is that when I try to connect, it works. The bad news is that my NX connection, and any SSH connections, are closed immediately.

I used the Ajax console and used lynx on whatismyip dot com and verified that I am indeed getting a new IP address from the VPN server. My question is simple: is there any way to get a VPN connection (either OpenVPN or PPTP) from within my NX session?

I'm running the latest and greatest of everything, including Ubuntu.

3 Replies

Most likely, traffic between your Linode and you is taking one path (outside the VPN) before the VPN is brought up, but once the VPN is up, it provides a better route to get to you. You can verify this with "ip route" (or "ip -6 route" if you're using IPv6) and "ip route get 192.0.2.1" (substituting the IP address of the other end – that is, where you are).

Is the VPN between your Linode and where you are, or is it to somewhere else?

There are a couple solutions:

1) Insert a more specific route to get to your IP address, without going through the VPN.

2) Configure things to not route all Internet-destined traffic through the VPN.

3) Set up the VPN the normal command-line way, and NX in through the VPN address.

Interestingly, this is more a limitation of IP routing than it is a Linux-specific problem; your kernel isn't running IOS, but it is a surprisingly capable router. So, be open to solutions from the networking side of the fence :-) -rt

Thanks for the response!

The VPN I am trying to access is somewhere else, either in the U.K. or in D.C.. It's outside of my route to the Linode.

Regarding your suggestion 3 below, are you saying that I would log into the VPN from the command line and then NX into the new IP of the system? That seems doable, except I've never done VPN "the normal command line way".

I'll research that and see what I can find. Thanks!

This article goes through the command-line method of getting an OpenVPN server set up; the server and client configs aren't that different, except the client doesn't have to deal with the certificate authority stuff.

I do use OpenVPN from my netbook to my Linode, but I haven't yet tried the NetworkManager method. I have a couple other endpoints that don't use NetworkManager, so it was pretty much just copy/paste for that.

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