hi guys! I'm planning to setup a linux VPN server. I have Search LQ but have not found enough information on my planned setup. I want to have a VPN that would be directly accessed by windows clients from another site.

Please give me any suggestions that would best fit my needs. I also need that the VPN is open source.. I have a little reading about openvpn but I really don't know if it would satisfy my needs.

Also, I want to ask if I could set it up on my linux firewall box if it's not a security issue or should I set it up behind my firewall box??

Thanks in advance.

Hi guys, after googling and much searching I have found the site below.. I'm starting to implement what's being suggested on this article. It uses Bridged Ethernet tunnels instead of Routed IP Tunnels.

This might help other people who are interested in implementing openvpn with same planned setup as mine but the problem is that this article is too old..

I presume you've already looked at the OpenVPN site? The version 2.0 HOWTO is pretty good. I use routed rather than bridged but with certificates and TLS and also use the OpenVPN GUI for Windows clients. If your Windows users don't have Admin rights there's a bit of mucking about to do - I use the Windows Resource Kit subinacl to grant users rights to start/stop the service, but all my users find it pretty easy to use and it's very stable. I also use it locally to protect my Wireless traffic. I managed to do all this from the OpenVPN site info but if you get stuck shout.

Thanks for the reply andrew. Just one question, if it's appropriate this question here.. I have managed to install the vpn server as well as the client with no problem but why can't I browse the machines in the office? I can see only the vpn server. What could be the problem? Any hints?

Firstly if you want openvpn clients to see each other there's a client-to-client directive in the openvpn conf that should allow that.

For browsing a Windows network life's a bit more difficult if you are using routing like me because the NetBios broadcast stuff won't route. In my case the OpenVPN server is also a Samba server (and WINS server) so I should be able to browse other Windows machines but in practice I didn't bother to get it to work because I only needed the clients to see the Samba server. There are probably also firewall/routing issues to consider as the openvpn network (10.8.x.x) is separate from my main internal LAN (192.168.x.x).

If you use a bridged OpenVPN solution then everything should just work as it's the same network and broadcasts will therefore work, however, I wanted a separate network so that I could restrict and control VPN access with my server's firewall.

If you want to try and get the browsing to work I'd recommend running Wireshark on the server and client to see what's happening. Even without normal Windows browsing you might still be able to connect to other machines if you know their IP address by using \\ipaddress\sharename in the address box.

Good luck.

I got it working right now.. Thanks pal!! I really appreciate your help..