NetworkManager ignores pushed openvpn routes

I'm going to have to tag my own bug report as "cannot duplicate". The problem went away just now after a couple of reboots. I have no idea why - I don't think I changed anything.

It doesn't look like I can easily mark this appropriately. Can someone else do it if I don't succeed?

Thanks, and sorry to bother.

I can confirm this bug.

network-manager 1.2.2-0ubuntu0.16.04.3
network-manager-openvpn 1.1.93-1ubuntu1

The pushed routes are totally lacking, as are the DNS servers if one doesn't use the VPN as the default gateway for all traffic (i.e. by activating "Use this connection only for resources on its network").

Sadly, this means it's quite unusable except for the most trivial applications..

After some digging around I found that installing the new upstream releases of both network-manager (1.4.2) and network-manager-openvpn (1.2.6) fixed this problem.

Any chance of getting a backport to xenial? This is a severe issue for those with OpenVPNs.

I tested this behaviour and discovered this:

Routes are pushed correctly with "Use this connection only for resources on its network" settings when there is only one client from same network connected to openvpn server. If there are more than one clients connected from same network (router) it doesnt work.

hlavki, I can't imagine that the misbehaving client is even aware of other clients on the same network segment. Surely this is coincidental.

Hi,
I am also affected by this bug. Any chance to ask maintainers to upgrade both packages?

https://wiki.gnome.org/Projects/NetworkManager
https://git.gnome.org/browse/network-manager-openvpn

Hello,
I am also affected.
Ubuntu 16.04
network-manager-openvpn-gnome 1.1.93-1ubuntu1.1

The same config file used from bash, works fine, in GUI ignores most of pushed routes.
There are lots logs like:
Apr 26 20:54:21 dell NetworkManager[1170]: <info> [1493232861.9544] vpn-connection[blabla,"vpn",20:(tun0)]: Data: Static Route: 10.42.0.0/16 Next Hop: 10.8.0.4
9
But finally routing table is not changed.

I am also affected, although this was working when using OpenVPN over the default port 1194 on UDP. I had to regenerate keys and in the process decided to move to port 443 TCP to better handle firewalls, and after this could see the "Data: Static Route:" information in the log, but no route was added.

Update on the above - after a reboot the routes were correctly added. So it seems that changing the config can upset the ability to create routes until a reboot.

Same problem with newest stable version:

network-manager-openvpn/now 1.2.6-2ubuntu1 amd64
network-manager-openvpn-gnome/now 1.2.6-2ubuntu1 amd64

In logs i see many routes but only one or two (??!!) of them are really added to routing table.

P.S. Guys... this very annoing bug in next days will have birthday...

Issue is reproducible for me on Ubuntu (Kubuntu) 17.04:

network-manager-openvpn 1.2.6-2ubuntu1
openvpn 2.4.0-4ubuntu1.3

Temporary workaround that can be used instead of reboot:
 $ sudo systemctl restart NetworkManager

This works for me. After restarting NetworkManager all pushed routes are correctly set.

as parasit-go2 said:
Within cli, works:
$ sudo openvpn --config file.ovpn
verify connection and check "ps" of openvpn
now disconnect.

Now start via gui.
Verify connection and check "ps" of openvpn
See the differences?

This is *still* happening in Artful, nm 1.8.4-1ubuntu3, nm-openvpn 1.2.10-0ubuntu2. Seriously, this needs to be fixed. How do I get someone's attention? I have tried and cannot follow the path of the code through the dbus amazingness.

The same issue :-/

Ubuntu 16.04.4 LTS

network-manager-openvpn 1.1.93-1ubuntu1.1
network-manager-openvpn-gnome 1.1.93-1ubuntu1.1

I am usually setting:
VPN connection settings -> IPv4 Settings -> Routes... -> [x] Use this connection only for resources on its network.

So that my default GW is not changed as I need only the VPN routes.
Except that with this bug, the VPN routes are not really applied on my system.

When running openvpn on its own, everything is working.

Confirmed, just setting up new Xubuntu virtual machine 17.10 - after all updates.
Architecture: amd64
network-manager-openvpn and network-manager-openvpn-gnome both Version: 1.2.10-0ubuntu2

I originally started with a config downloaded from pfSense. As usual, openvpn from command line is flawless.
After reboot was able to connect with NM getting

Seriously, while nearly 2 years old is nothing for an open-source bug, this is one of a whole set of bugs in the Gnome openVPN plugin. I've never had these troubles with KDE. The plugin could do with some love.

$ sudo systemctl restart NetworkManager
also fixed pushed routes from server. Thanks author of comment #14

[Re-posted because I accidentally clicked on “Post Comment”. Sorry for that.]

Confirmed with Ubuntu 19.04. An

   push "route 134.94.0.0 255.255.0.0 net_gateway"

is ignored. The pushed route is mentioned in the NetworkManager log:

    NetworkManager[893]: <info> […] Data: Static Route: 134.94.0.0/16 Next Hop: 134.94.16.1

(The gateway is even correct.) However, no route is actually added. Interestingly enough, a

    push "route 134.94.0.0 255.255.0.0 vpn_gateway"

*is* added to the routes. I suspect the device is wrong, because a manual

    # route add -net 134.94.0.0/16 gw 134.94.16.1 dev tun0
    SIOCADDRT: Network is unreachable

fails obviously. Instead of “tun0”, it must be the normal net device for which the gateway is valid. Possibly, NetworkManager tries to add the route to “tun0” always, which would be wrong.

Is there an upstream bug report?

I reported it at <https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/NetworkManager-openvpn/issues/40>.