OpenVPN Server : Enable Password Authentication

In this tutorial, we will be going through the steps to enable Password Authentication for OpenVPN for both the server and client sides.

At this point, we assume you have an OpenVPN server installed and working (via Certificates ) on Ubuntu Server.

Steps we are going to follow
• Add a new User on the server and set a password
• Edit server.conf file and enable password authentication on the server.
• Edit client.ovpn file and specify to ask for username and password during login.

Step 1 : Adding New User

Type the below command to create a new user
root@ubuntu:~# useradd user1

Set the password of the newly created user
root@ubuntu:~# passwd user1

Step 2 : Server Side configuration to enable Password Authentication on OpenVPN Server

Locate the openvpn-plugin-auth-pam.so file, it is usually present on any one of the below location
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/openvpn/plugins/ or /usr/lib/openvpn/plugins/

In our case, file openvpn-plugin-auth-pam.so is present on the directory “/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/openvpn/plugins/“

Edit the server.conf file using your favourite editor and add the below line at the end
plugin /usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/openvpn/plugins/openvpn-plugin-auth-pam.so login

So, your final server.conf file should look something like this

Save the file and exit

Step 3 : Edit client.ovpn file to specify to ask for the username password auth

At the top of the file add the below line and save it
auth-user-pass

Your client.ovpn file should look something like this

That’s all!
WHen you connect, it will ask you for the username and password (as shown below ). You need to enter the username of the user account created on step 1