Re: [Openvpn-users] Re: 2.0 Feature Freeze Discussion

[Mathias Sundman <mathias@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 2 Dec 2004, Charles Duffy wrote:

> One management-interface capability that seems useful that I don't see
> covered in the documentation is the ability to have OpenVPN support a
> "hibernating" state (in which no actual VPN connections are made or
> accepted), optionally invoked on startup and set/reset via the management
> interface.
>
> That way an OpenVPN client could be run on boot in hibernating state as an
> administrative user, and an unprivileged user could toggle its actual
> operation on and off. To my knowledge the nearest alternative right now is
> starting on boot with a password-associated key (or auth-user-pass) and
> management-query-passwords set, and using the management interface to
> provide the passwords (starting it up) or trigger a SIGHUP to interrupt
> service. This doesn't seem quite satisfactory.

Didier Conchaudron has written a patch for the service wrapper which gives 
a similar management interface with which you can start and stop openvpn 
tunnels as a non-admin user.

I've started playing with a pre-release of this for my OpenVPN GUI 2.0 
release, but it should be failry close to release by now.

Do you still feel a need for a "hibernating" state?


> Otherwise, it looks good -- though it's hard to say anything for sure
> until I've played with it more (my side project based on the management
> interface went on hiatus due to a large project at work getting a
> near-future deadline assigned; consequently, it may be a week or so until
> I've had time to finish exercising the whole thing programmatically).

I agree, it looks very good and it's time to close it up to get it out to 
the world still waiting for a non-beta release of 2.0.

I'll do my best to get OpenVPN GUI 2.0 together soon, and then I might 
have some slight requests that can hopefully make it to 2.0

One thing I know already now is that I'd like to see more "states" 
defined during the connect phase. In OpenVPN GUI 2.0 I'd like to remove 
the default real-time displaying of the openvpn log output (It will still 
be possible to turn it on again).

Instead I'd like to show a couple of informative messages about the 
connecting process based on the STATE like:

* Waiting for initial respone from server.
* Authenticating with server.
* Downloading configuration from server.
* Assigning IP address to virtual network interface.
* Adding routes to system.
* Connected

The number of states should be enough for a user to make a basic 
assumption on why a connection fails without browsing a log. If he still 
can't find the cause just by seeing on which STATE it fails, he will 
of cource have to open the real log to get details.

--
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