r/OpenVPN • u/wahwahwong • 15d ago

I made a simple OpenVPN Manager for Linux

Hey everybody!

I wrote this OpenVPN Manager because I needed to maintain OpenVPN servers for work.

I wanted something simple that could handle the common tasks without having to remember a lot of commands or manually edit configuration files.

GitHub: https://github.com/cirtron/OpenVPN-Manager

It's a single Bash script with a menu-based interface. It currently supports:

  • Installing and configuring OpenVPN
  • Creating VPN users and .ovpn files
  • Revoking users properly with CRL
  • Listing and regenerating client configurations
  • Checking server and client status
  • Restarting or removing the OpenVPN server
  • NAT and firewall configuration
  • Multiple Linux distributions

The client configuration is generated as a single .ovpn file with the required certificates and keys included.

I originally built it just for my own work, mainly to make maintenance easier and reduce repetitive manual work. After making a few improvements, I decided to put it on GitHub in case it is useful to someone else.

It's a relatively small project, but I'd be happy to hear any feedback or suggestions.

10 Upvotes

81% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

5

u/plaisthos Author of OpenVPN for Android and OpenVPN Developer 14d ago

Unfortunately since it is Claude generated you have picked a lot of stuff that is questionable at best:

`if openvpn_supports_data_ciphers; then`

    `cipher_lines=$'data-ciphers AES-256-GCM:AES-128-GCM\ndata-ciphers-fallback AES-256-GCM'`

`else`

    `cipher_lines=$'cipher AES-256-GCM\nncp-ciphers AES-256-GCM:AES-128-GCM'`

You should rather leave the default than hardcoding cipher lists that are worse than the default. Also data-ciphers-fallback AES-256-GCM is just nonsense since it will assume that client that are really old and cannot do cipher negotiation can a do AES-GCM, which a false assumption.

`ignore-unknown-option block-outside-dns`

`setenv opt block-outside-dns`

Is a similar thing that is probably an AI generated artificat.

I would you to read up on the configuration directives and go over your options to clean that up because it currently does not inspire confidence in the script.

0

u/wahwahwong 14d ago

Yeah, fair criticism. I'll go back through the OpenVPN docs and revisit those options.

1

u/ForeignAd6708 14d ago

Great, kill switch ?