[Entropic]

Originally Posted by jggimi

Only NICs that have a hostname.if(5) file will be provisioned on boot by the OS. The netstart(8) script scans for these files, and takes no action when it doesn't find them.

First: confirm your em0 network connection has been provisioned on your running system. Do this by issuing the command $ ifconfig em0, and review the output. If your em0 NIC has an IP address and netmask assigned, and an active status, the NIC has been provisioned. If you don't have an active em0 NIC, then issue $ ifconfig by itself and get a list of all your NICs. You'll have a loopback pseudo-NIC, all physical NICs, an IPSec encapsulation pseudo-NIC, and your non-working OpenVPN tunnel pseudo-NIC.

I've rechecked the /etc directory and there is indeed two files: hostname.em0 and hostname.tun0. On typing "more hostname.em0" its got "inet autoconf" as its sole line of code.

Without the ability to upload the script here (No explanations were given when I asked about how I'd browse to a file from within openBSD firefox to upload earlier in this thread), I can report the following following "ifconfig":

em0: flags=xxxxxx<UP, BROADCAST, RUNNING, SIMPLEX, MULTICAST, AUTOCONF4> mtu 1500
lladr: xxxxxxxxx
index 1 priority 0 llprio 3
groups: egress
media: ethernet autoselect (1000baseT full-duplex)
status: active
inet 192.168.xxx.x netmask broadcast 192.168.xxx.255

tun0: flags=xxxx <UP, POINTOPOINT, RUNNING, MULTICAST> mtu 1500
Index: 5 priority 0 llprio 3
groups: tun
status: down

pflog0: flags=141 <UP, RUNNING, PROMISC> mtu 33136.
index 6 priority 0 llprio 3
groups: pflog

There's a bunch of other interfaces in there such as iwn0 (WLAN - wireless), enc0 (active - whatever this is: Bluetooth?, lo0 (127.0.xxx - loopback?)
but I doubt these are relevant. I'm listing them in case they might be...

Second: If em0 has been provisioned, it had to have been provisioned somewhere. Either via netstart -- which you have told us does not have a provisioning file for em0 -- or by an rc.local(8) script, which you haven't mentioned and is therefore unlikely, or by manually entering ifconfig(8) provisioning commands some time after booting, which you haven't mentioned doing.

Ok this is now clarified: netstart is provisioning the em0 ethernet NIC via hostname.em0 containing "inet autoconf" for its DHCP connection from the router.

If you are manually entering a command like # ifconfig em0 inet autoconf after your system is already running, this would be after your OpenVPN connection has already failed to start.

Yes, this would from my understanding be the exact scenario I'm in right now with working internet on an active em0 interface, but "down" for the tun0 (OpenVPN) status..

Frankly I don't see how this really takes me any further. I'd already established in previous posts that my internet was working, and that its the OpenVPN thats not. This troubleshooting just done merely confirms what we already knew and doesn't do anything to resolve the lack of OpenVPN... Can anyone help here noting the very detailed posts earlier in this thread clearly explaining both system observations and actions taken to try and get OpenVPN working? i.e. openvpn has been installed successfully, my openvpn (.ovpn) files have been placed in /etc/openvpn where they should be, and hostname.tun0 has been edited with vi to include the appropriate
"up
!/usr/local/sbin/openvpn --daemon --config /etc/openvpn/openbsd.ovpn" command which seems to be doing something because on startup I'm being prompted for an auth username and pw.. yet still openvpn (tun0) is reporting "down" on ifconfig checking.