Windows - running OpenVPN as a service
One of the lesser known features of the Windows version of OpenVPN is its ability to run it as a service. This allows OpenVPN to start and establish a VPN connection without a user logging in on the system. The OpenVPN service is installed by default, but is not started automatically.
In this recipe, we will show how the OpenVPN service can be controlled using the OpenVPN GUI application and how to perform troubleshooting on the service.
Getting ready
Set up the client and server certificates using the first recipe from Chapter 2, Client-server IP-only Networks. For this recipe, the server computer was running CentOS 6 Linux and OpenVPN 2.3.11. The client computer was running Windows 7 SP1 and OpenVPN 2.3.11. Keep the configuration file, basic-udp-server.conf, from the Server-side routing recipe in Chapter 2, Client-server IP-only Networks at hand. For the client, keep the configuration file, basic-udp-client.ovpn, from the...
