Check if OpenVPN is running

How can I check if OpenVPN is running on my server? I have tried with "sudo systemctl status openvpn", but I'm not sure if everything is ok, because I get: "Active: active (exited) since ..."

● openvpn.service - OpenVPN service Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/openvpn.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled) Active: active (exited) since Mon 2017-10-23 08:01:05 CEST; 1h 3min ago Process: 2356 ExecStart=/bin/true (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS) Main PID: 2356 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS) Tasks: 0 (limit: 4915) CGroup: /

Why "exited"? The similar occurs two lines bellow (Process and Main PID).

4 Answers

The service you should check is openvpn@NAME where NAME is the name of your configuration file (without the .conf).

So if your openvpn configuration file is /etc/openvpn/client-home.conf you should use systemctl status openvpn@client-home.

Here is an example output:

● - OpenVPN connection to client-home Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/openvpn@.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled) Active: active (running) since Mon 2017-10-23 07:57:37 CEST; 2h 15min ago Docs: man:openvpn(8)

Where you can see the service is active and running.

IMHO, the best way to test a service is to test it's functionality, in this case accessing another machine connected through the VPN.

Check openvpn@* instead of just openvpn to show the status of whichever configuration you have loaded.

The config file for OpenVPN has changed location, today on debian based OS like linuxmint is placed in

/etc/openvpn/server/server.conf

And to check its service status its done by

$ systemctl status ● - OpenVPN service for server Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/openvpn-server@.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled) Active: active (running) since Sun 2022-01-09 20:55:09 CET; 2h 47min ago Docs: man:openvpn(8)

Another way to check if your on VPN is to look at your interfaces. So run ifconfig (when VPN is not on) and then when VPN is on and you should see the difference