OpenVPN fails to load data

I download and set up OpenVPN on the web interface and generate a profile. I then manually change the IP address so it will turn to my FreedomBox. I get the screenshot below, but I can’t access google or any other part of the web.

Steps to Reproduce

  1. forward VPN port 1194
  2. grab external IP address with external tool.
  3. login into the freedombox web interface
  4. Change sources to allow the downloading of “apps”
  5. download OpenVPN
  6. generate profile
  7. Add file to the OpenVPN app downloaded from F-droid on android phone or laptop
  8. Connect

Expected Results
I can browse the internet like I could a year back

Actual results
All services that require an internet connection hault

Screenshot


Information

  • *You are running Debian GNU/Linux bookworm/sid and FreedomBox version 21.15. FreedomBox is up to date.
  • Hardware: RBPi 4
  • *image from freedombox website, I think I tried both stable and unstable.

I’m having the exact same issues. Same with wireguard. Connects but on my clients no internet connection. I think it has to do with configuring them to be on the external not internal network. But when I try to edit and change it to the external I get a error “This type of connection is not yet understood”. These two things are the only things that don’t work for me on freedombox.

I’m also having the same issue. Have you found a solution? I believe it is related to the Network configuration. It seems that, unless you have a network interface set up in the external zone, you won’t have internet access.

In my case, I have a Pioneer edition FB, which has only one ethernet network interface. I have it set up as internal. When I connect via OpenVPN, I can access internal resources and other devices that are on the same subnet, but have no internet.

If I change it to external, I get internet access when connected from outside via OpenVPN. However, devices that are within my home network lose access to the internal services provided by the FB (samba, dlna).

What has been your experience?

Looks like you are running it from a phone.
Have you tried using a computer with OpenVPN to see if you get different logging?

A computer would also help with piniging to spot the issue raised by feferzr regarding network access.
Pings to your local network like your router or gateway (ie 192.168.1.1) and to somewhere like like 1.1.1.1 (Cloudflare) removes issues of DNS resolution and can tell us if the connections are there or not.

To do web browsing via the freedombox from outside the local network and also keep local services available for local machines, perhaps a solution would be to keep the interface as internal, enable privoxy and set the freedombox as proxy in the web browser?

I haven’t tried though, so not sure (I don’t use samba or dlna, so for me setting the interface as external is fine).

1 Like

Similar problem here… OpenVPN on Android connects successfully on raspberry pi. I have access to local files via SAMBA. But I cannot browse the internet.
Tried messing around with “internal” and “external” networks with no luck though.

Any one had better results?

As Avron suggested:

To do web browsing via the freedombox from outside the local network and also keep local services available for local machines, perhaps a solution would be to keep the interface as internal, enable privoxy and set the freedombox as proxy in the web browser?

You can install Privoxy. Then when connected via the VPN set the proxy for your web browser to 10.91.0.1:8118 (VPN IP for your Freedombox : Privoxy port) and you will be able to browse the web.

This solution works pretty well if you only have one network interface (set to “internal”), such as in the Pioneer FB.