Connect Linux OpenVPN client to Netgear VPN Server

My parents got a shiny new Netgear R80000 wireless router which supports OpenVPN out of the box. The client configuration it generates doesn’t work right away, though, when I try to connect from my Linux Mint desktop. The connection is successful but I can’t ping or reach anything on the other network.

I discovered on this forum that you must add a couple options to the config file the router produces. You can do this either on the command line or by modifying the config file. The options are to add an interface to the VPN and to  create a route to the network, like so:

--ifconfig 192.168.1.5 255.255.255.0 --route 192.168.1.1

I took the generated non-windows VPN configuration from their router, unzipped it on my linux desktop, and then ran this command:

sudo openvpn --config parents.ovpn --ifconfig 192.168.1.5 255.255.255.0 --route 192.168.1.1

It worked like a charm.

One thought on “Connect Linux OpenVPN client to Netgear VPN Server”

  1. The above gateway command to Netgear router did not work for me. I had to make a slight change as below:

    sudo openvpn –config client.conf –ifconfig 192.168.1.5 255.255.255.0 –route-gateway 192.168.1.1

    Alternatively, I could add the two lines below to the client.conf file:

    ifconfig 192.168.1.5 255.255.255.0
    route-gateway 192.168.1.1

    Hope this helps

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