VPN and access your local network

Last updated on Dec 5, 2023

To allow your OpenVPN server to access your local network, you need to configure your OpenVPN server to push routes to your clients. This can be done by modifying the OpenVPN server configuration file.

Here is a general step-by-step guide:

Access the OpenVPN Server Configuration: The location of this file depends on how you've set up OpenVPN, but based on your Docker Compose file, it will likely be in ./openvpn-data/conf directory. The file is usually called server.conf.
Modify the Configuration File: You need to add a line to the configuration file that pushes the route to your local network to your clients. The line should look something like this:

push "route 192.168.1.0 255.255.255.0"

Replace 192.168.1.0 and 255.255.255.0 with the IP address range and subnet mask of your local network, respectively.
Restart the OpenVPN Server: After saving your changes, restart your OpenVPN server for the changes to take effect. If you're using Docker, you can do this with the command docker restart openvpn.

Please note that your local network must allow inbound connections from the VPN. This might involve configuring your firewall or router to allow connections from the VPN subnet to the local network.

Also, note that the push "route" command in the OpenVPN server configuration file only changes the routing for the VPN clients, not the server. If you want the server to be able to route to the VPN clients, you'll need to add a similar route command to the server configuration, without the push.

Lastly, always make sure to replace network addresses and subnet masks with actual values for your network.