How to connect to Access Server from a Linux computer

To connect to Access Server from a Linux client computer, you need to follow these steps:
  1. Install an OpenVPN client for Linux

  2. Login to the Access Server's Client Web Server and download the desired client config file (typically called "client.ovpn"

  3. Run the OpenVPN client with the downloaded client config file

Installing an OpenVPN client:

Usually, the easiest way to install an OpenVPN client is to use the package management system for your particular Linux distribution.  Run one of the following commands (as root):

Fedora/CentOS/RedHat:

yum install openvpn

*NOTE: OpenVPN Access Server is not compatible with any version below the 2.1 OpenVPN Community/Linux client!

Ubuntu/Debian:

apt-get install openvpn

Once the openvpn package is fetched from the Internet and installed, run the client with the --version argument to make sure that it is version 2.1:
openvpn --version
OpenVPN 2.1_rc15e x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu [...]
[...]

Running the OpenVPN client with the downloaded client config file:

Usually, the easiest way to install an OpenVPN client is to use the --config argument to specify the location of the downloaded client config file:

openvpn --config client.ovpn

Caveats:

When a Linux/Unix client is used with Access Server, the Access Server is unable to alter the DNS settings on the client in question.