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I'm looking to use something like OpenVPN between 2 systems to create a secure private and reliable connection. However on the OpenVPN site they don't have much information regarding Linux VPN clients (only servers). Is there a way to have one Ubuntu OpenVPN server with the other Ubuntu client connecting directly to it? This would be all using the SERVER versions of the OS without any X or GUI stuff.

TIA

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Designate one machine as a OpenVPN server and one machine as a client. The client connects to the server and you will have a bi-directional VPN link. If both of the machines are always connected with a static IP, it does not really matter which one is the server and which one is the client.

I do not understand how X or GUI stuff or server/non-server versions of operating systems matter. OpenVPN does not care.

Another possibility is tinc. It is easy and simple like OpenVPN.

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    don't use tinc. Read this cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/linux_vpn.txt
    – goo
    Aug 2, 2011 at 19:10
  • @Geoff, that is interesting. I edited my answer to redact the recommendation to use it.
    – snap
    Aug 2, 2011 at 19:18
  • @goo, that article is from Sep 2003, could tinc have been ameliorated since? May 25, 2016 at 22:38
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Yep, works fine. You'll want to make sure that you don't have a password on your keys, though; otherwise you'll need to enter a password on each boot. And that means it should have its permissions properly restricted (not that they were open in the first place... right? ;) ).

You should write a client configuration and place the file in the OpenVPN configuration directory with a filename ending in .conf. On startup, every .conf file in the directory will spawn an OpenVPN process. A client conf will connect to an OpenVPN server, a server conf will spawn an OpenVPN server.

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I'm still a huge fan of sshuttle:

The most basic use of sshuttle looks like: ./sshuttle -r username@sshserver 0.0.0.0/0 -vv

If you would also like your DNS queries to be proxied through the DNS server of the server you are connect to: ./sshuttle --dns -vvr username@sshserver 0/0

See a previous answer of mine for more details.

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