Linux Networking Cookbook

9.10. Running OpenVPN As a Nonprivileged User

Problem

On many Linux distributions, you already have the nobody user and group. All you need to do to configure OpenVPN to run as the nonprivileged user nobody user is add user nobody and group nobody to the server configuration file. Or, your Linux distribution may have created a unique OpenVPN user and group. But Debian doesn't have a nobody user or group, nor does it create unique users. What do you do?

Solution

No problem whatsoever. Just create an openvpn user and group, and use them:

	# groupadd openvpn
	# useradd -d /dev/null -g test -s /bin/false openvpn

Then, add these lines to your OpenVPN configuration files:

	user openvpn
	group openvpn
	persist-key

Do this for both servers and clients.

Discussion

The nobody user tends to get a bit overburdened, so you should create a unique user for OpenVPN and not use nobody.

persist-key keeps the connection up even after OpenVPN has dropped to the unprivileged openvpn user, which cannot read private keys or other root-only files.

See Also

• man 8 openvpn

• OpenVPN How-to: http://openvpn.net/howto.html

• man 8 useradd