Any need to generate new .crt, .key, .ovpn when moving from an old OpenVPN?

[gbguy71]

Apologies if this has been covered, but I can't find the answer.

In 2015 I generated .crt, .key, and .ovpn files and am moving to a new router and the latest Merlin. I was using these same files successfully from a 2018 Merlin release. Is there any need to go through the generation process again?

I guess that the real question is "Once you generate these files how do you know if you ever need to generate them again to work with the latest OpenVPN?"

TIA

 

[Yota]

OpenVPN may be backward compatible, at least they didn't remove support for mainstream encryption ciphers, but I would recommend you to regenerate as you may be using outdated encryption ciphers.

On how to know if regeneration is required, you can check the configuration in your .ovpn file for features that were removed, such as outdated encryption ciphers.

Tutorial: Change the Data-Channel Encryption Cipher

How to change Access Server's data-channel encryption cipher. Adjust OpenVPN security with this tutorial.

openvpn.net

If you don't want to regenerate the key and ca, you only need to edit the .ovpn to modify the outdated content, but you still need to re-import the modified .ovpn to the client.

 

[gbguy71]

A bit late, but thanks! I now had to learn easy-rsa 3 , To save others the effort, here is the best tutorial I could find.