1.3.5 (1120) does not close tunnel on LOGOFF

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omascia

Posts: 9
Joined: Wed Feb 29, 2012 4:50 am

Post by omascia » Wed Feb 29, 2012 5:23 am
Hello,

A bit of introduction as I'm new here.
I'm new to Viscosity, not to VPNs. I'm on day 2 or 3 of my 30 days evaluation and will have to order about 10 to maybe 15 licenses (mix of Windows and Mac) as soon as I feel ready. I currently concentrate on the Windows version. Tests look very promising. Very stable connection, close to zero issue indeed (only servers where I need these clients to connect are pfSense 2.01. Though...

On Windows 7 (64 bits) I have just discovered that with a tunnel connected, if I LOGOFF Windows and then log back in, I find the tunnel still connected (and really, it works) even with the the GUI closed (Exit Viscosity) and even with the Viscosity service stopped (openvpn.exe is still running).

To summarize my findings :

* To connect a tunnel, the GUI needs the service running in order to launch openvpn.exe under the SYSTEM authority. As design, I expected this, no issue with that, of course.
* If I try to stop the service using the services.msc applet, I get an unexpected termination while stopping (error 1067). That does not impact the opened tunnel, nor the GUI, but that does not feel 'right'.
* If I use the GUI to close the tunnel, it does so properly and openvpn.exe do exits properly. Even if the service process had been stopped/crashed before. Nice, I like it that way.
* Though with a connected tunnel, service running (or stopped / crashed after having connected the tunnel - makes no difference), on LOGOFF the GUI closes (or terminates, don't know), but it does not close the tunnel, leaving it opened (openvpn.exe is still running).
* Upon new logon, the GUI does not reconnect with the current state (tunnel connected). It believes and reports the tunnel as disconnect (which it is not), and from then on has an abnormal behavior.

This behavior (keeping the tunnel running on LOGOFF) might be really useful but : 1) the GUI would have to handle it properly and "reconnect" with the opened tunnel when restarting and 2) some setting should govern wether the tunnels opened when the GUI closes (logoff or any other close) are kept opened or closed.

Thanks for your attention,
--
Olivier

Eric

User avatar
Posts: 1146
Joined: Sun Jan 03, 2010 3:27 am

Post by Eric » Wed Feb 29, 2012 9:00 pm
Hi Olivier,

This is definitely not intended behaviour. Upon log off, all connections should be disconnected. In previous versions we had trouble making this happen reliably. In the mean time in the latest beta, Viscosity will block log off. We hope to come up with a solution for the next release to make logging off terminate connections reliable.

We won't be adding anything to have OpenVPN persist between session for now.

Regards,

Eric
Eric Thorpe
Viscosity Developer

Web: http://www.sparklabs.com
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