<connection> profiles are non-functional + unkown/unsupported option details are lacking

[ihipop]

Client configuration files may contain multiple remote servers which it will attempt to connect against. But there are some configuration options which are related to specific --remote options. For these use cases, connection profiles are the solution.

By enacpulating the --remote option and related options within and , these options are handled as a group.

An OpenVPN client will try each connection profile sequentially until it achieves a successful connection.

https://build.openvpn.net/man/openvpn-2.6/openvpn.8.html#CONNECTION%20PROFILES:~:text=By%20enacpulating%20the,a%20successful%20connection.

if a configure file is contains any <connection> , the connection will fail with

2024-04-05 19:07:13 Client -- ERROR --: Connection failed: option_error: sorry, unsupported options present in configuration: UNKNOWN/UNSUPPORTED OPTIONS
2024-04-05 19:07:13 [STATUS] Connection, Client connection failed: option_error: sorry, unsupported options present in configuration: UNKNOWN/UNSUPPORTED OPTIONS

there are two problems about the error:

1. This error message neither prints out the line that caused this issue nor provides any details about the UNKNOWN/UNSUPPORTED OPTION so I HAVE TO TRY line by line,may I have a detailed error about UNKNOWN/UNSUPPORTED OPTIONS
2. They don't complain about this error when I use OpenVPN-connect IOS/ANDROID/MAC/Windows. They use openvpn3 too, why openvpn3-linux don't allow this, is this a bug or some misunderstanding?

[schwabe]

OpenVPN Connect might be using old version of OpenVPN3 that only warns and ignores these options instead of failing.

Also we have unit te sts that check for support:

https://github.com/OpenVPN/openvpn3/blob/master/test/unittests/test_remotelist.cpp#L98

so <connection> is supported

[ihipop]

OpenVPN Connect might be using old version of OpenVPN3 that only warns and ignores these options instead of failing.

Also we have unit te sts that check for support:

https://github.com/OpenVPN/openvpn3/blob/master/test/unittests/test_remotelist.cpp#L98

so <connection> is supported

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/openvpn3

I’m using https://github.com/OpenVPN/openvpn3-linux/tree/v21
It will fail with <connection> indeed

and shall we have the detail about UNKNOWN/UNSUPPORTED OPTIONS or at least the line numbers in the future?

[dsommers]

@ihipop Which command do you use to start the VPN session? openvpn3 session-start or the Python script /usr/bin/openvpn2?

[ihipop]

@ihipop Which command do you use to start the VPN session? openvpn3 session-start or the Python script /usr/bin/openvpn2?

openvpn3 session-start

[dsommers]

@ihipop Thanks! I'll run some tests locally and debug this. I have to admit that <connection> profiles has not been tested in OpenVPN 3 Linux, and it does some parsing as well (via the OpenVPN 3 Core library). It might be there are some issues related to that parsing. The openvpn2 python wrapper does a different set of pre-parsing, that's why I asked about that.

[ihipop]

@ihipop Thanks! I'll run some tests locally and debug this. I have to admit that <connection> profiles has not been tested in OpenVPN 3 Linux, and it does some parsing as well (via the OpenVPN 3 Core library). It might be there are some issues related to that parsing. The openvpn2 python wrapper does a different set of pre-parsing, that's why I asked about that.

I am glad to know about that :)

While looking forward to a fix for that, may I have a wish for a detailed error about UNKNOWN/UNSUPPORTED OPTIONS in the future, which will help us a lot to find out which UNKNOWN/UNSUPPORTED OPTIONS causes the problem instead of testing it by commenting out the config line by line.
I think a line number of the config file is required at least, I would much appreciate it if you give the name of the specific UNKNOWN/UNSUPPORTED OPTIONS

[schwabe]

@ihipop that should already be detailed enough. There might be a bug with reporting in respect to <connection>. Can you share your configuration that triggers that?

[ihipop]

this will cause the error when connecting (not importing)

2024-04-05 19:07:13 Client -- ERROR --: Connection failed: option_error: sorry, unsupported options present in configuration: UNKNOWN/UNSUPPORTED OPTIONS

# setenv USERNAME "test@example.com"
# OVPN_WEBAUTH_FRIENDLY_USERNAME=test@example.com
# OVPN_FRIENDLY_PROFILE_NAME=TEST
client
<connection>
remote example.com 1988 udp
</connection>
<connection>
remote example.com 1988 tcp
</connection>
push-peer-info

# Easy-RSA Type: client
# Name: test@example.com

<cert>
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
.
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
</cert>

<key>
-----BEGIN PRIVATE KEY-----
.
-----END PRIVATE KEY-----
</key>

<ca>
-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----
.
-----END CERTIFICATE-----
</ca>


<tls-crypt>
-----BEGIN OpenVPN Static key V1-----
.
-----END OpenVPN Static key V1-----
</tls-crypt>

dev tun

NO line numbers, NO detailed error about which UNKNOWN/UNSUPPORTED OPTIONS cause the problem

comment out the <connection> </connection> fixs the issue

[dsommers]

@ihipop Can you please try the latest development snapshot to see if the missing "unkown/unsupported options details" are resolved? The builds pushed out yesterday and today have a newer OpenVPN 3 Core library release included which should have some more improvements in that area.

Fedora Copr devsnapshots: https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/dsommers/openvpn3-devsnapshots/
Ubuntu PPA based devsnapshots: https://launchpad.net/~djpig/+archive/ubuntu/openvpn

[ihipop]

@dsommers I'm sorry but I didn't use Fedora or Ubuntu, would this work if I rebuild using the AUR https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/openvpn3 ?

[dsommers]

@ihipop I'm not experienced in how the PKGBUILD setup works. And I see that does several hacks to link against an older glib2 currently.

If you can get a PKGBUILD to use the latest glib2 library, using the dev/gdbuspp-migration branch in the OpenVPN 3 Linux git repo and you can get the GDBus++ library built ... then it should most likely be possible to test this properly on Arch too.