Search code examples
vpnopenvpngentoo

Why is openvpn responding with "could not read Auth username from stdin?"

Just did an update on my system and for some reason I can no longer log into my VPN service. I'm running gentoo.

Here's my /etc/openvpn/openvpn.conf. 

client
dev tun
proto udp
remote myvpnguys.com 1194
resolv-retry infinite
nobind
persist-key
persist-tun
ca ca.crt
tls-client
remote-cert-tls server
comp-lzo
verb 1
reneg-sec 0
crl-verify crl.pem
keepalive 10 300
auth-user-pass

I start my service on gentoo as follows:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/openvpn start
 * Caching service dependencies ...                                       [ ok ]
 * Starting openvpn ...                                                   [ ok ]
 * WARNING: openvpn has started, but is inactive

And here is the log file which shows the username prompt, but it's as if it just keeps on going.

$ sudo cat ./openvpn.log
Sat Aug 15 00:57:32 2015 OpenVPN 2.3.7 x86_64-pc-linux-gnu [SSL (OpenSSL)] [LZO] [EPOLL] [MH] [IPv6] built on Aug 15 2015
Sat Aug 15 00:57:32 2015 library versions: OpenSSL 1.0.1p 9 Jul 2015, LZO 2.08
Enter Auth Username:
Sat Aug 15 00:57:32 2015 ERROR: could not read Auth username from stdin
Sat Aug 15 00:57:32 2015 Exiting due to fatal error
Solution

  • This is a bug in 2.3.7 and fixed in 2.3.8: https://community.openvpn.net/openvpn/ticket/248

    Add this line to /etc/portage/package.keywords:
    =net-misc/openvpn-2.3.8

    and install 2.3.8.