Introduction

This project is meant to quickly spin up an optimally configured OpenVPN server with downloadable, sane client configs. It performs the following functions:

1. This vagrantfile spins up an Ubuntu 16.04 x86 server in a user selected cloud provider.
2. It then configures the server using ssh provisioners to serve as an OpenVPN server.
3. Finally it creates an ovpn client config file for easy importing into any OpenVPN client.

Supported Cloud Providers

• Digital Ocean
• Amazon Lightsail

Prerequisites

1. Install vagrant

2. Install vagrant plugins

   • vagrant-rsync-back Used to sync the client ovpn and cert files back to the host from the droplet.

     vagrant plugin install vagrant-rsync-back

   • vagrant-digitalocean Only required if using the DigitalOcean cloud provider.

     vagrant plugin install vagrant-digitalocean

   • vagrant-lightsail Only required if using the Amazon Lightsail cloud provider.

     vagrant plugin install vagrant-lightsail

3. Create an account with a supported cloud provider and acquire credentials.

• Digital Ocean

  After creating an account, a Personal Access Token is required.

• Amazon Lightsail

  After creating an account, a set of Access Keys is required.

Configuration

All configuration options are stored in the file config.yaml. Each config option has an accompanying comment. Modify the config.yaml file as needed for user specific cases. The only required options are the cloud provider authentication tokens or keys. Only one cloud provider needs to be configured.

Basic Usage

vagrant up
vagrant rsync-back

1. The server is created and configured with the vagrant up command.
2. Using the vagrant rsync-back command will retrieve the generated client configs. These configs and certs can then be found in the ./client-configs directory on the local host.

Using with an OpenVPN client

Once the client.ovpn file has been acquired by either of the mechanisms described above it can be imported into most OpenVPN client softwares. A short, incomplete list follows:

Windows

• OpenVPN

Mac

• Tunnelblick

Troubleshooting

• After a vagrant destroy be sure to delete the contents of the ./client-configs directory before running vagrant up again.

Digital Ocean

• When doing a vagrant up occasionally the command will hang. Though there could be several reasons for this the most likely is that a vagrant ssh key-pair already exists in your DigitalOcean account. You can either delete the offending key from your DigitalOcean account as described here or you can edit the provider.ssh_key_name variable from the Vagrantfile.