Mojave: Not connecting on login

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viscussteve

Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Oct 19, 2018 1:17 am

Post by viscussteve » Fri Oct 19, 2018 1:26 am
Recently the client has stopped connecting to the vpn when I login to my mac. I always have to check and manually connect. I tried removing the setup and re adding it. It then worked for a while but stopped auto connecting again yesterday.

Are there any suggestions on how I can troubleshoot this further please?

James

User avatar
Posts: 2313
Joined: Thu Sep 04, 2008 9:27 pm

Post by James » Wed Oct 24, 2018 11:28 pm
Hi viscussteve,

Make sure Viscosity's "Start Viscosity at Login" option is ticked (under the General section in the Preferences window). When upgrading to a major new release of macOS it's not unusual for this option to be reset (it corresponds to Viscosity being listed as a Login Item). You can confirm Viscosity is listed as a login item by going to the Apple Menu->System Preferences->Users & Groups->Select your user account to the left->Click the Login Items tab on the right.

You should then double-check that any connections you want to connect when Viscosity starts up have the "Connect when Viscosity opens" checkbox ticked.

If the connection/s still don't appear to be connecting it likely means that they are trying to connect, but the attempt is failing. More information should be available in the log for the connection/s:
https://www.sparklabs.com/support/kb/ar ... envpn-log/

Cheers,
James
Web: https://www.sparklabs.com
Support: https://www.sparklabs.com/support
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sparklabs

olssonm

Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Oct 26, 2018 4:45 am

Post by olssonm » Fri Oct 26, 2018 4:51 pm
I'm also experiencing these issues. It worked as expected until I installed Mac OS Mojave. A major problem is that it is failing silently, no error message or anything – so I just randomly detected that I wasn't connected after a while.

When investigate the logs it says "The OpenVPN subsystem could not be started."

Debug:
Code: Select all
2018-10-25 19:23:01: Viscosity Mac 1.7.11 (1463)
2018-10-25 19:23:01: Viscosity OpenVPN Engine Started
2018-10-25 19:23:01: Running on macOS 10.14.0
2018-10-25 19:23:01: ---------
2018-10-25 19:23:01: State changed to Connecting
2018-10-25 19:23:01: Checking reachability status of connection...
2018-10-25 19:23:02: Connection is reachable. Starting connection attempt.
2018-10-25 19:23:12: The OpenVPN subsystem could not be started.
2018-10-25 19:23:12: State changed to Disconnected
If I wait a few more seconds and then manually select a connections, it connects just fine:
Code: Select all
2018-10-25 19:24:02: Viscosity Mac 1.7.11 (1463)
2018-10-25 19:24:02: Viscosity OpenVPN Engine Started
2018-10-25 19:24:02: Running on macOS 10.14.0
2018-10-25 19:24:02: ---------
2018-10-25 19:24:02: State changed to Connecting
2018-10-25 19:24:02: Checking reachability status of connection...
2018-10-25 19:24:02: Connection is reachable. Starting connection attempt.
2018-10-25 19:24:08: OpenVPN 2.4.6 x86_64-apple-darwin [SSL (OpenSSL)] [LZO] [LZ4] [PKCS11] [MH/RECVDA] [AEAD] built on Jul 20 2018
2018-10-25 19:24:08: library versions: OpenSSL 1.0.2o  27 Mar 2018, LZO 2.10
2018-10-25 19:24:16: TCP/UDP: Preserving recently used remote address: [AF_INET]xxxx
2018-10-25 19:24:16: UDP link local: (not bound)
2018-10-25 19:24:16: UDP link remote: [AF_INET]xxxx
2018-10-25 19:24:16: State changed to Authenticating
2018-10-25 19:24:16: WARNING: this configuration may cache passwords in memory -- use the auth-nocache option to prevent this
2018-10-25 19:24:16: [xxxx] Peer Connection Initiated with [AF_INET]xxxx
2018-10-25 19:24:23: GDG6: problem writing to routing socket
2018-10-25 19:24:23: Opened utun device utun10
2018-10-25 19:24:23: do_ifconfig, tt->did_ifconfig_ipv6_setup=1
2018-10-25 19:24:23: /sbin/ifconfig utun10 delete
2018-10-25 19:24:23: NOTE: Tried to delete pre-existing tun/tap instance -- No Problem if failure
2018-10-25 19:24:23: /sbin/ifconfig utun10 xxxx xxxx netmask 255.255.0.0 mtu 1500 up
2018-10-25 19:24:23: /sbin/ifconfig utun10 inet6 xxxx
2018-10-25 19:24:23: add_route_ipv6(xxxx -> xxxx metric 0) dev utun10
2018-10-25 19:24:23: add_route_ipv6(xxxx metric -1) dev utun10
2018-10-25 19:24:23: Initialization Sequence Completed
2018-10-25 19:24:23: DNS mode set to Full
2018-10-25 19:24:24: State changed to Connected

James

User avatar
Posts: 2313
Joined: Thu Sep 04, 2008 9:27 pm

Post by James » Tue Oct 30, 2018 3:19 am
Hi olssonm,

The error message you're seeing is that OpenVPN itself is unable to launch, or Viscosity is unable to connect to it. As we're not seeing the same thing on any test machines with a fresh install of macOS 10.14, I'd be inclined to think something installed on your machine may be blocking either the OpenVPN process or Viscosity connecting to it. Perhaps slow-to-load security software, firewall software, etc. Try temporarily disabling or uninstalling any third-party software that could potentially be interfering and see if the issue persists.

You can also try the latest beta version of Viscosity. While it doesn't include any changes that directly address the issue reported here, it does include a number of other bug fixes and improvements:
https://www.sparklabs.com/support/kb/ar ... -versions/

Cheers,
James
Web: https://www.sparklabs.com
Support: https://www.sparklabs.com/support
Twitter: https://twitter.com/sparklabs

olssonm

Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Oct 26, 2018 4:45 am

Post by olssonm » Tue Oct 30, 2018 3:30 am
Okay, just to report back; the beta-release seems to work as expected – great!
Code: Select all
2018-10-29 17:21:17: Viscosity Mac 1.7.12b5 (1469)
2018-10-29 17:21:17: Viscosity OpenVPN Engine Started
2018-10-29 17:21:17: Running on macOS 10.14.0
2018-10-29 17:21:17: ---------
2018-10-29 17:21:17: State changed to Connecting
2018-10-29 17:21:17: Checking reachability status of connection...
2018-10-29 17:21:18: Connection is reachable. Starting connection attempt.
2018-10-29 17:21:19: OpenVPN 2.4.6 x86_64-apple-darwin [SSL (OpenSSL)] [LZO] [LZ4] [PKCS11] [MH/RECVDA] [AEAD] built on Aug 15 2018
2018-10-29 17:21:19: library versions: OpenSSL 1.0.2p  14 Aug 2018, LZO 2.10
2018-10-29 17:21:20: TCP/UDP: Preserving recently used remote address: [AF_INET]xxxx
2018-10-29 17:21:20: UDP link local: (not bound)
2018-10-29 17:21:20: UDP link remote: [AF_INET]xxxx
2018-10-29 17:21:20: State changed to Authenticating
2018-10-29 17:21:20: WARNING: this configuration may cache passwords in memory -- use the auth-nocache option to prevent this
2018-10-29 17:21:20: [xxxx] Peer Connection Initiated with [AF_INET]xxxx
2018-10-29 17:21:26: GDG6: problem writing to routing socket
2018-10-29 17:21:26: Opened utun device utun10
2018-10-29 17:21:26: do_ifconfig, tt->did_ifconfig_ipv6_setup=1
2018-10-29 17:21:26: /sbin/ifconfig utun10 delete
2018-10-29 17:21:26: NOTE: Tried to delete pre-existing tun/tap instance -- No Problem if failure
2018-10-29 17:21:26: /sbin/ifconfig utun10 xxxx xxxx netmask 255.255.0.0 mtu 1500 up
2018-10-29 17:21:26: /sbin/ifconfig utun10 inet6 xxxx
2018-10-29 17:21:26: add_route_ipv6(xxxx -> xxxx metric 0) dev utun10
2018-10-29 17:21:26: add_route_ipv6(xxxx -> xxxx metric -1) dev utun10
2018-10-29 17:21:26: Initialization Sequence Completed
2018-10-29 17:21:26: DNS mode set to Full
2018-10-29 17:21:28: State changed to Connected
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