Force UDP 1194 on native Chromebook OpenVPN Client

VPN
1

I have an older Chromebook that doesn’t support Android apps so i can’t download the OpenVPN Android app. I have a pfsense firewall at my work and am trying to configure the chromebook to VPN in using the native OpenVPN VPN client. I was able to export my CA and user cert with no issue. I setup openVPN client on the native chromebook network settings.

It keeps failing to connect. I checked my firewall logs and it is hitting it. The problem I am having is that the chromebook uses a random port to connect each time. Is there a way to force the chromebook to always use UDP 1194? That is the port setup and open on my firewall.

Thanks for your help!

2

Is the random port being used source port, or destination port? Source port shouldn’t matter, unless your VPN server is setup weird.

3

Are you sure you’re looking at the firewall logs right? Any OpenVPN client should default to 1194 but the ephemeral/return port should always be random.

You should still be able to specify a port in the client. If there’s no option for port number you might try this format: “vpn.servername.com:1234” replacing 1234 with whatever port the service is listening on, even 1194.

4

My solution would be to stick Linux on it ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

5

It is a random source port. I used the wizard to setup the openvpn server. I have pc and Mac working with no issue. Of course they are using openvpn and tunnelblick clients. Is there something else I can try? Adding :1194 at the end of the vpn ip doesn’t seem to work.

6

this seems to be most likely what he’s seeing. It doesn’t make any sense why it would try a random destination port.

7

Thanks for the reply! I did try what you said and used vpn.company.com:1194 and it still tries a random port each time. I check the firewall status logs and can see it hitting the firewall each time and the port randomly changing each time. It’s the native chrome openvpn setup. Google even recommends to try and use a client if possible. I guess it may not be possible this way.

8

OK. I will give that a try. Thanks!

9

Source port would be irrelevant, my guess is the client is misconfigured somehow. Look at the logs in the OpenVPN client to see what’s going on. I had an issue when a VPN client was updated and did something weird with my accepted ciphers and had to reissue the settings to the phone.