OpenVPN: Buggy config dialog for "Password with Certificates (TLS)" authentication

[Kirill Müller]

For an OpenVPN connection, the "VPN" tab of the configuration dialog is buggy when choosing "Password with Certificates (TLS)" authentication. Choosing a certificate file for one of the three User|CA|Private sometimes clears, sometimes sets the entries for the two other certificates that are not affected. Also, a passphrase for the private key is mandatory but shouldn't be.

Another option is to use one single PKCS#12 certificate (--pkcs12 switch for /usr/sbin/openvpn). It took me two hours to figure out that the .p12 file I was given actually can be converted to three .pem files using these commands:

openssl pkcs12 -nocerts -in YOUR_CERT.p12 -out userkey.pem
openssl pkcs12 -nokeys -clcerts -in YOUR_CERT.p12 -out usercert.pem
openssl pkcs12 -nokeys -cacerts -in YOUR_CERT.p12 -out userca.pem

(taken from http://blog.stracca.net/?p=73). It would be very, very helpful to have at least a note with a helpful link in the dialog concerning PKCS#12 certificates, or, at best, if the GUI supported this type of certificate right away (perhaps through yet another authentication type "Password with Certificates (TLS) with PKCS#12 key").

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.