You saved me from these contstant "timeout errors" while using VPN Unlimited. I'm glad I found this. This should sticky somewhere!!!!If I had to guess …
One of annoyances about using OpenVPN w/ commercial providers is that they sometimes *force* an AUTH FAIL error during the connection attempt. Or it may even occur asynchronously w/ an active connection. What this error means is that the server has determined the username/password is invalid. But in this particular case, where it's KNOWN to be valid, and was even working up until that point, it's the OpenVPN provider that's forcing the AUTH FAIL, presumably to prevent access to certain servers, or perhaps kick off users once the server becomes overloaded. IOW, they're using it to *manage* their servers rather than for the purposes it was intended (an actual invalid username/password).
I see this a lot more w/ the lower-tier OpenVPN providers (FastestVPN, KeepSolid, etc.) rather than more reputable ones like ExpressVPN (just one of the reasons they cost a bit more, but sometimes worth it). But even so, *any* OpenVPN provider is capable of pulling this "trick" to manage their servers. And the problem for the end-user is that an AUTH FAIL error is considered fatal; it kills the OpenVPN client process completely! And until YOU manually restart it (or reboot), it will remain OFF. In many cases, the GUI won't even be aware this has happened. It just assumes the OpenVPN client will keep retrying the connection. But that's only a valid assumption for NON fatal errors.
Bottom line, I strongly recommend that *everyone* use a watchdog script to monitor for the loss of the OpenVPN client process and restart it as necessary. I don't normally use Merlin for my own OpenVPN clients, but more commonly FreshTomato and/or DD-WRT. And in both those cases, I've written scripts for these purposes.
tomato-ovpn-client-watchdog.sh - Pastebin.com
Pastebin.com is the number one paste tool since 2002. Pastebin is a website where you can store text online for a set period of time.pastebin.com
ddwrt-ovpn-client-watchdog.sh - Pastebin.com
Pastebin.com is the number one paste tool since 2002. Pastebin is a website where you can store text online for a set period of time.
As you can see, these aren't particularly complicated. They just monitor the process table for the OpenVPN client on a periodic basis, and if not found, restart it. As simple as it is, it's *very* effective. So much so, I wish @RMerlin would incorporate a watchdog for each OpenVPN client as part of the firmware, since this is such a common problem (even if not everyone is aware of it) and easily fixable.
There may be some watchdog scripts floating around this forum I'm unaware of. But just in case there isn't, what I may do is put together a script for Merlin based on the ones I've already written for DD-WRT and FreshTomato.
I really apprecite it.
