I’ve used openvpn on Mac (using Tunnelblick) for a few years for a home->work VPN connection with no issues, and suddenly today, it would disconnect me every two minutes.

This seems a very accurate timing problem, so can’t be ISP related surely? But I could not find the issue anywhere. Rebooted Mac and the router, still the same.

So, I just managed to get the same VPN working recently on a Debian based Linux box using the command line version of openvpn – and that outputs all the logs to the terminal. I thought I’ll give that a go in case it yields any helpful information.

Anyway, the error that stuck out was this one:

Wed May 25 19:32:30 2016 ERROR: Linux route add command failed: external program exited with error status: 2
Wed May 25 19:32:30 2016 Initialization Sequence Completed
Wed May 25 19:34:30 2016 [chris] Inactivity timeout (--ping-restart), restarting
Wed May 25 19:34:30 2016 SIGUSR1[soft,ping-restart] received, process restarting

And a quick search on Google took me to this chap : http://www.drmaciver.com/2012/05/openvpn-repeatedly-losing-connections-with-inactivity-timeout/ which said he had an inactive openvpn connection.

Perhaps my Linux box has got it stuck open? It wasn’t connected until just now, but lets reboot the machine anyway (it never gets rebooted as its a media server)

Lo and behold, it sorts out the issue, so the Debian based machine had been connected to the VPN, even though all the terminal windows had been closed. Naughty…

By admin

One thought on “OpenVPN keeps disconnecting with an inactivity timeout”
  1. super thank you for this software .

    worked a treat for me lets me read my sdxc micro sim card now!!!!!

    before just could not read anything.

    thanks again

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