Re: Can a configuration item be cleared in the server.conf file

On Mon, 5 Feb 2024 14:04:38 +0100, Gert Doering <[email protected]> wrote:

>Hi,
>
>On Mon, Feb 05, 2024 at 12:25:51PM +0100, Bo Berglund wrote:
>> >How old is your OpenVPN?
>> 
>> This is on the Ubuntu 20.04 LTS server:
>> 
>> Aug 21 2023:
>> 
>> $ openvpn --version
>> OpenVPN 2.4.12 x86_64-pc-linux-gnu [SSL (OpenSSL)] [LZO] [LZ4] [EPOLL] [PKCS11]
>
>Ah, yes.  So that's a bit of an antique :-)

$ apt policy openvpn
openvpn:
  Installed: 2.4.12-0ubuntu0.20.04.1
  Candidate: 2.4.12-0ubuntu0.20.04.1

Cannot get anything newer...


>> It looks like a kind of locale thing, thinking that it is a US location, but it
>> uses the CET time zone notwithstanding:
>
>No, it's just old OpenVPN.  The ticket I linked to shows that I changed
>the logging timestamp to ISO format "for 2.5.0".  Your 2.4.12 has a
>release date younger than 2.5.0 (due to overlapping release trains), but
>feature-wise, it's older.
>
>We maintain multiple releases in parallel (like, 2.4.x and 2.5.x, or now
>2.5.x and 2.6.x).  Features get added to "master" and show up in the next
>.0 release (2.5.0, 2.6.0).  After that, only bugfixes (and sometimes minor
>features) get added to .1, .2, .3 releases - "changing time stamps and
>making logs look very different" was seen as breaking change, so even
>if the code change is small, not suitable for integration in 2.4.9->2.4.10.
>
>See also:
>  https://community.openvpn.net/openvpn/wiki/SupportedVersions
>
>
>IOW, yes, the old code was using the C function "ctime()", which will
>print "something locale based".  The new code changes that to an ISO 8601
>based format, locale independent

>Date:   Sat Jun 20 19:23:03 2020 +0200
>
>    Change timestamps in file-based logging to ISO 8601 time format.
>

Thanks for the clarification!
That is exactly what I need...

Can I upgrade the apt installed openvpn to 2.5 even though it is not offered by
the apt system?

NOTE
----
On the *other* Ubuntu server running openvpn, which is Ubuntu Server 22.04.3 LTS
(was upgraded back in October) the version is:

$ apt policy openvpn
openvpn:
  Installed: 2.5.9-0ubuntu0.22.04.2
  Candidate: 2.5.9-0ubuntu0.22.04.2


it shows this using the command suggested earlier:

$ openvpn --show-gateway
2024-02-05 07:41:09 ROUTE_GATEWAY 10.0.0.1/255.255.255.0 IFACE=eth0
HWADDR=00:50:56:9e:c6:86

But the logs do not show any timestamp at all...
A typical line:
HasanA_AGI/83.**.**.105:59902 [Hasan****] Inactivity timeout (--ping-restart),
restarting

So here the server logs are totally without timestamps and there is nothing in
the /lib/systemd/system/[email protected] file about logging either.

EXITING....
I think I will drop this altogether, the servers are doing their thing anyway...


-- 
Bo Berglund
Developer in Sweden