How To Set up OpenVPN Server In 5 Minutes on Ubuntu Linux

How To Set up OpenVPN Server In 5 Minutes on Ubuntu Linux

Setting up an OpenVPN server on Ubuntu Linux can be done in just a few minutes using the following steps:

1. Install OpenVPN and the easy-rsa utility:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install openvpn easy-rsa

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2. Copy the easy-rsa templates to a new directory:

sudo mkdir /etc/openvpn/easy-rsa
sudo cp -r /usr/share/easy-rsa/* /etc/openvpn/easy-rsa/

3. Change to the easy-rsa directory and build the certificate authority (CA) certificate and key:

cd /etc/openvpn/easy-rsa
./easyrsa init-pki
./easyrsa build-ca

4. Create a server certificate and key:

./easyrsa build-server-full server nopass

5. Create a client certificate and key:

./easyrsa build-client-full client1 nopass

6. Generate Diffie-Hellman parameters:

./easyrsa gen-dh

7. Create a TLS authentication key:

openvpn --genkey --secret ta.key

8. Copy the necessary files to the OpenVPN directory:

sudo cp pki/ca.crt pki/private/server.key pki/dh.pem ta.key /etc/openvpn

9. Create a configuration file for the OpenVPN server (/etc/openvpn/server.conf) with the following contents:

port 1194
proto udp
dev tun
ca ca.crt
cert server.crt
key server.key
dh dh.pem
server 10.8.0.0 255.255.255.0
ifconfig-pool-persist ipp.txt
push "redirect-gateway def1 bypass-dhcp"
push "dhcp-option DNS 208.67.222.222"
push "dhcp-option DNS 208.67.220.220"
keepalive 10 120
tls-auth ta.key 0
key-direction 0
cipher AES-256-CBC
comp-lzo
user nobody
group nogroup
persist-key
persist-tun
status openvpn-status.log
verb 3

10. Start the OpenVPN server:

sudo systemctl start openvpn@server

11. Enable the OpenVPN server to start at boot:

sudo systemctl enable openvpn@server

That's it! Your OpenVPN server should now be set up and running. You can now create a client configuration file (e.g., client1.ovpn) with the following contents:

client
dev tun
proto udp
remote SERVER_IP 1194
resolv-retry infinite
nobind
persist-key
persist-tun
remote-cert-tls server
auth-nocache
cipher AES-256-CBC
comp-lzo
setenv opt block-outside-dns
key-direction 1
verb