MullvadVPN/OpenVPN: no internet issue (and how to solve it)

[isadora]

Hello Mageia community! I am a newcomer to this distro, and it's been a month since I first installed it on a VM, and then on my desktop PC. I wanted to briefly share my experience after weeks trying to configure the only piece of software that I couldn't get to work after installing this distro.

[A little story] I wanted to use MullvadVPN in Mageia (XFCE) but I found that the Mullvad App couldn't be installed due to package dependencies.
As a workaround, I decided to use the OpenVPN configuration files that this VPN provider offers, and then it was supposed to be a few clicks procedure (click on the Network icon on the panel, hover over "VPN connections", then "Add a VPN connection", then select "Import a saved VPN configuration", pick the downloaded config file, and that's it! After entering my username/password I got the VPN connection established.
BUT! I had no internet at all. This is where I spend a couple of weeks trying to find information in different forums and search engines, but nothing worked. Package updates, change config files, systemd packages, etc. Nothing helped to get my VPN connection working.
It was then that I found that Mageia comes with a firewall enabled, which one can disable in the Mageia Control Center app (under the "Security" menu, and then clicking on "Set up your personal firewall"). That's what I did, but the VPN connection still didn't work.

[Here's my humble solution] My last attempt, after disabling the firewall, was to set up an OpenVPN connection manually (click on the Network icon on the panel, hover over "VPN connections", "Add a VPN connection", pick "OpenVPN" from the dropdown). Since I had no idea how to fill all those fields, I opened the existing VPN connection (the one I created by importing the config file), and put them side by side. I copied exactly the same values for each field (Gateway, Authentication type, then also copied the values that appear when you click on the "Advanced" button). After copying every value as it was on the existing connection, I saved and tried to connect to it. And it worked! I got my VPN working, and it worked after a restart, and then I configured my internet connection to connect to the VPN automatically.
Then I enabled the firewall again, and the VPN connection kept working.
I have no idea about what happened in the background since I have little experience with these programs, but what I did simply worked (then I tried it on other PCs and VMs too). So I hope that if someone encounters the same issue trying to use the same VPN service, my solution would help with that.
To sum up:

1. Download your OpenVPN files provided by your VPN provider
2. Open the Mageia Control Center and go to the Security sub menu
3. Click on Set up your personal firewall, mark the checkbox of "Everything (no firewall)" and save
4. Create a new VPN connection by importing the downloaded config files
5. Create a new OpenVPN connection: in order to fill the information required, open the details of the VPN connection imported in the previous step, put them side by side, and fill in the fields (remember to click on the "Advanced" button and copy the values for each tab under that menu too)
6. Connect to the new VPN connection
7. Enable the firewall again in the Mageia Control Center (same as in Step 3, but unchecking the "Everything (no firewall)" checkbox)

Just wanted to share this with the community, I'll keep learning and enjoying my Mageia now.

Thanks for this beautiful distro.

[Germ]

Thanks for sharing. Welcome to Mageia!

[doktor5000]

FWIW, you can also switch to NetworkManager and directly import the .ovpn connection file IIRC. See e.g. viewtopic.php?f=25&t=5782 on how to switch.
Otherwise you manually need to copy only the config file to the place where net_applet expects it to be, or you copy it to /etc/openvpn/vpn_name.conf

[bluepanther69]

FWIW, you can also switch to NetworkManager and directly import the .ovpn connection file IIRC. See e.g. viewtopic.php?f=25&t=5782 on how to switch.
Otherwise you manually need to copy only the config file to the place where net_applet expects it to be, or you copy it to /etc/openvpn/vpn_name.conf

Hi doktor5000, I came across that post during my research and followed those steps also, but that didn't help either
Besides, Mullvad does not provide a .ovpn file, but a .conf file (along with a certificate file and a script to update something called openresolvconf). Their tutorial to use openvpn also indicates to copy all files to /etc/openvpn/, and it's expected that when you do that openvpn will automatically load the config and connect. But in my case, nothing happened. I couldn't find how to start OpenVPN as a service either. However, I manually executed

Code: Select all

openvpn *.conf

in the terminal (as root under /etc/openvpn) , and that command threw no errors, but still faced the "no internet" issue.