question about Inactivity timeout

[knighthawk 19]

So I get the following from time to time which forces a disconnect\reconnect operation and I'm wondering three things, a) what's the timeout involved  can I adjust said setting for this to happen perhaps less often, and c) what beyond massive packet failure like was happening today with Dheneb might cause said timeout as it's happend in the past on days where that didn't seem to coincide with logged incidents on the server involved.  When these happens it's certainly not for a lack of data trying to be pushed\recieved at said points in time and box\network level connectivity in general is otherwise in place and without issue though I've yet to catch one of these 'as it happens' to investigate in the moment.

 

. 2014.10.29 11:24:12 - OpenVPN > [server] Inactivity timeout (--ping-restart), restarting
. 2014.10.29 11:24:12 - OpenVPN > SIGUSR1[soft,ping-restart] received, process restarting
. 2014.10.29 11:24:12 - OpenVPN > Restart pause, 2 second(s)
! 2014.10.29 11:24:12 - Disconnecting
. 2014.10.29 11:24:12 - Management - Send 'signal SIGTERM'
. 2014.10.29 11:24:12 - OpenVPN > MANAGEMENT: CMD 'signal SIGTERM'
. 2014.10.29 11:24:12 - OpenVPN > MANAGEMENT: Client disconnected
. 2014.10.29 11:24:12 - OpenVPN > Assertion failed at misc.c:785
. 2014.10.29 11:24:12 - OpenVPN > Exiting due to fatal error
. 2014.10.29 11:24:13 - Connection terminated.

[then immediately reconnects with no issues again for many hours or days]

 

Thanks.

 

Eddie 2.7/Winx64[7\2008r2]

[cyberninja 2]

I had a similar problem whereby my VPN connection would disconnect after being is use for about 60 minutes. Then I would have to manually reconnect to get it going again for another 60 minutes. This would repeat until I solved the problem.


To find the the problem I checked the messages log (I run Linux so for my system I check the messages log in /var/log/). In the messages log I found messages for inactivity timeout and ping-restart. Even though I was always active whether browsing, downloading a file, or watching a video, it would always show a disconnect with inactivity timeout. I found the cause of this problem: in the firewall settings there is a toggle for allowing or disallowing 'ping from WAN' which means allowing or disallowing a ping from outside the router / internet. Mine was set to disallow pings from the WAN/internet. After I toggled it to allow pings from outside the router / internet, my VPN connection stayed alive indefinitely - no more disconnects. So what seems to be happening is the AirVPN server periodically sends pings to the client (your computer) to check for activity. If the AirVPN server ping can't get through because your firewall is blocking it, then your computer doesn't see it and therefore doesn't respond with a ping back to the server. When this is the case, the silence the AirVPN server experiences from the client makes it think there is no activity, so it disconnects the VPN connection.


When I had a Verizon Actiontec router the ping option was defaulted to allow pings from the outside. When I recently switched to ASUS RT-N66U its default was to disallow pings from the outside and that's when my disconnect issue began.


To modify your router's firewall setting you'll need to look up the instructions for accessing it: for the ASUS routers (and many others) you can access it by opening a browser in your connected computer and entering web-address 192.168.1.1. When the login page shows you'll have to enter your login name and password (check the sticker on the router for the default username and password if you've never done this before). Once in, find the firewall area and look for the settings. Don't forget to save/apply any changes you've made before exiting.

[cyberninja 2]

Another attempt you can try is to add the line 'ping 15' in your AirVPN client configuration file, e.g., filename.ovpn. What this does is ping the openvpn server every 15 seconds to let it know you are still active. This might work if your problem is related to pings not otherwsie being sent by your client-side computer. In addition to the above post, you can also check your firewall to make sure openvpn is not being restricted.