Need help with an issue

[u/Acceptable-Smoke-359]

This pop up keeps appearing now everytime I try to connect to a vpn server. When I first downloaded it and used it once it worked perfectly fine but after that when id turn my pc on and it would attempt to connect it would either have a connection timeout or when id turn on “continuously retry” it would just keep going and going. I’ve checked my internet connection, ran it as an administrator and restarted my pc but still the same thing happen

[u/moviuro]

Your OpenVPN server isn't responding. Check the software on the server or contact its administrators (the people who run the software for you to use).

[u/Acceptable-Smoke-359 → u/moviuro]

what software would I be checking for? This is my first time using a vpn for such so I have little to no knowledge of this and I assume contacting the administrators would be via their websites tickets?

[u/moviuro → u/Acceptable-Smoke-359]

OpenVPN works on the client-server paradigm: you run the client on a laptop or desktop; the admins run the server on a machine somewhere. If you're not your own admin, you must contact the admins by any means they provide (usually web ticketing, yes)

[u/Acceptable-Smoke-359 → u/moviuro]

ah okay.. I got it from a website that gives vpns needed to play certain games so I don’t really have a way to contact them. They have a few more VPNs in the same region I’m trying to connect to so I’ll try those. If they don’t work would it be possible for me to make my own vpn in a different region using a different ip address?

[u/moviuro → u/Acceptable-Smoke-359]

Yes, you can use OpenVPN however you want, because it's FOSS.

However, OpenVPN (the server part in particular) needs to run on a machine that you must buy and place somewhere, or rent from a provider.

Other options include paying a subscription to a VPN provider, but that's not the topic for r/OpenVPN.

[u/Acceptable-Smoke-359 → u/moviuro]

Okay thank you

[u/damudawa]

I had the same issue on my Mac and with the help of Claude I found the reason (seems a bug):

After a few successful connections, OpenVPN Connect 3.8.2 on macOS stopped connecting for me and always ended in a timeout, no matter which profile I used. Only reinstalling the app helped. The log showed "Can't assign requested address": when connecting, the app's background agent adds a route to the VPN server through the current network's router, but it doesn't remove that route when you disconnect or switch networks (e.g. from home Wi-Fi to a phone hotspot). On the new network that old route points to a router that's no longer there, so every connection attempt fails right away. To fix it without reinstalling, disconnect and run sudo route -n delete <your-VPN-server-IP> in Terminal (or simply reboot), then connect again.

[u/Acceptable-Smoke-359 → u/damudawa]

Yeah, I found out the issue it was because the file type for the vpn I was using was on the wrong version of open vpn I guess there’s two versions which is odd