ANSWERED lost connection to openvpn from ipad2

[CultureVulture 30]

Hello.

I am a complete newbie and am totally lost and in need of some assistance. I have been travelling just fine with AirVPN on my ipad2 for the last couple of months of 2012. Then, odd stuff started to happen. Firstly, at times the VPN would only engage intermittently, ie, it might decide to engage on one occasion, but then the next time, it wouldn't come on at all. This went on for about a week or so. Now, suddenly, the VPN won't come on at all, ever. The green button comes on and stays on, but the system is clearly NOT pulling down settings, no matter what profile I am on, and there is absolutely nothing in the logs. I am not sure whether it is a coincidence that this started to happen after the recent update of Open VPN on 24 December 2012, which I applied. This was supposed to address a glitch affecting ipad mini and ipad air, I think, but surely should not have affected me? In any case, I deleted my profiles, and then installed new ones, but this has made absolutely no difference. I have been looking around in forums in Open VPN and on Air VPN but have seen nothing that either helps or makes any sense to me. I am stumped and really missing my VPN! Are there any ideas out there that could help me? I'd be most grateful! regards from Ocelot.

[OpenSourcerer 1441]

Try to perform a downgrade, if possible. Uninstall recent version and install the previous one.

[CultureVulture 30]

Thanks gigan3rd.

 

There doesn't seem to be a downgrade available, unfortunately. I did try uninstalling and reinstalling v1.0.3 in the vain hopes it might help, but it hasn't. I am now back to the same old tricks whereby sometimes the VPN will open, but mostly won't, and it's impossible to figure out what is the source of the problem. At least the fact that it does sometimes connect -when it feels like it- has meant I was able to generate some logs, but I have a suspicion these might not be helpful, because they seem to be recording what is happening when the VPN is on, but the problem is in the blockage that is stopping the VPN connecting in the first place, and I don't think that's reflected in the log.

Does anyone have any other ideas? Should I post this somewhere on the Open VPN forum? It is really doing my head in.

[CultureVulture 30]

Further to my earlier post, after uninstalling and reinstalling v1.0.3 of Open VPN, and it going back to the same mayhem as before, now suddenly something different is happening, and instead I get a yellow icon when I try to switch on a profile, and the system is telling me "Open VPN plugin not found." Can anyone orient me as to what might be happening here?

thank you.

[OpenSourcerer 1441]

I'm absolutely not familiar with iOS - but could you try to launch OpenVPN with maximum verbosity level enabled (found on the internet: verb=9 in client configuration file)? This will log pretty much everything. Hopefully.

If you're reinstalling, make sure to delete any folders and/or files OpenVPN could have created (if this applies to iOS).

 

Anyways, did you browse the support forum of OpenVPN Connect for iPad? It's quite big, ~15 pages, but maybe there's something that might help you.

[CultureVulture 30]

I did check out that forum, but there didn't seem to be anything related to my problem. I also know that I can't have the VPN running on both the ipad and another computer at the same time, so that's not what is causing the disconnection problems. Right now the VPN is running, but if I disconnect it, I can be guaranteed of no VPN when I try to reconnect, and it will stay like that until it is good and ready to reconnect, for no reason known to me.

 

Anyway, I will post on the Open VPN forum and see if the folks there have any ideas. Will let you know if I crack the solution to this odd problem. Thanks for your assistance.

[CultureVulture 30]

OK, I didn't even have to post on Open VPN site, because in some more digging around the internet, I found one person commenting that they were having issues with Open VPN Connect, and all they do is turn off the app (ie hitting the iPad home button), and then just reopen the app. When you try the switch again, it turns green and the connection comes on. As simple and as stupid as that.

I would rather figure out what the source of the problem is and fix it at the root, but anything that gets me back behind the VPN on my iPad is fine by me! No point looking a gift horse in the mouth. I have tried this solution out at least 10 times, and it seems to work... let's hope nothing else weird pops to ruin my enjoyment of this great VPN service! I will give this a few days, and if it continues to provide a solution to the connection problems, I will mark this as resolved.

 

Thanks again, gigan3rd.

[OpenSourcerer 1441]

Are you kidding me? Very basic. So dumb. Wow.

 

You're welcome.

[CultureVulture 30]

OK, I didn't even have to post on Open VPN site, because in some more digging around the internet, I found one person commenting that they were having issues with Open VPN Connect, and all they do is turn off the app (ie hitting the iPad home button), and then just reopen the app. When you try the switch again, it turns green and the connection comes on. As simple and as stupid as that.

I would rather figure out what the source of the problem is and fix it at the root, but anything that gets me back behind the VPN on my iPad is fine by me! No point looking a gift horse in the mouth. I have tried this solution out at least 10 times, and it seems to work... let's hope nothing else weird pops to ruin my enjoyment of this great VPN service! I will give this a few days, and if it continues to provide a solution to the connection problems, I will mark this as resolved.

Thanks again, gigan3rd.

 

Further to this, I just discovered that OpenVPN has just released an update (1.0.4) available in App Store now. It addresses the glitch I reported.