openvpn3-session-start(1)

💖 openvpn3-session-start(1) — OpenVPN 3 Linux 💖

okay bestie, gather round, because this is the one that actually does the thing. It's part of the OpenVPN 3 Linux manual family, and it's literally the command that starts a VPN session. no cap. 🦋

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✨ NAME ✨

openvpn3-session-start — OpenVPN 3 Linux — Starting VPN Sessions 👑

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

openvpn3 session-start [OPTIONS]
openvpn3 session-start -h | --help

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🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

so what does it DO. This starts a brand new VPN session, meaning: a VPN client process gets launched, it goes and gathers whatever credentials it needs, connects to the remote server, and then configures a VPN interface on this host with the VPN IP address, the network routes, and possibly some DNS settings too. it's giving main character energy for your whole network stack. 💅

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✨ OPTIONS ✨

• -h, --help — prints the usage and help details right to your terminal. the classic. 🫶
• -c CONFIG-FILE, --config CONFIG-FILE — the name of the configuration profile you wanna start. fun fact: session-start first looks for matching configuration profile names that are already pre-loaded into the configuration manager. if it doesn't find one there, then it tries to load and parse a configuration file off the file system. so it checks the vibes first, then the files. 🔍
• -p CONFIG-DBUS-PATH, --config-path CONFIG-DBUS-PATH — you can use this instead of --config, and you give it the D-Bus path to the configuration profile inside the configuration manager. need a list of available configuration paths? run openvpn3 configs-list. slay. 🌈
• --persist-tun — this one pairs up with --config to make sure the connection will not tear down the virtual VPN interface when it reconnects. keeps the tunnel alive through the drama. for the full deets, see openvpn3-config-manage. 🧚
• --timeout SECS — tells it how long it should keep trying to establish a connection before it gives up and aborts. default? never time out. it will wait for you forever, fr fr. 😭
• --background — starts the connection in the background, after the basic user credentials have been provided. heads up though: if you use this, you'll need openvpn3 session-manage(1) for any further interaction with the session. once it's in the background, it's on its own little journey. 🙈
• --dco BOOL — enables kernel based Data Channel Offload for this session only. basically it moves the tunnelled network traffic to be handled inside the kernel. this improves the processing of the network traffic, and moves the encryption, decryption and packet authentication for the tunnelled network traffic to be handled inside the kernel instead of being passed via the OpenVPN client process in user space. very efficient, very demure. ⚡

⚠️ okay important: --dco is only available if openvpn3-linux has been built with this support. it will also require the ovpn-dco-v2 kernel module to be available. no module, no offload, periodt. 💀

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👑 SEE ALSO 👑

• openvpn3(1)
• openvpn3-configs-list(1)
• openvpn3-session-acl(1)
• openvpn3-session-manage(1)
• openvpn3-session-stats(1)
• openvpn3-sessions-list(1)

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and that's the whole page bestie, you ate. this was openvpn3-session-start(1) from OpenVPN 3 Linux — go start a session and be iconic about it 💖✨🎀🦋🌸💅🫶