Configure IPVanish OpenVPN on Debian + Ubuntu

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ipvanish-full-logoIPVanish is a great VPN service growing in popularity. IPVanish provides plenty of bandwidth to allow fast downloads while being secured with encryption for maximum privacy and anonymity. IPVanish don't keep any logs so they take your privacy seriously. This guide shows you how to configure OpenVPN with IPVanish on Debian or Ubuntu and will work on the Raspberry Pi and Banana Pi too. It also shows you how to autostart your VPN connection on boot.

Configure IPVanish OpenVPN on Debian + Ubuntu

Get your IP on the internet first to compare after you have run it again

SSH in to your device and check your public IP address

wget http://ipecho.net/plain -O - -q ; echo

Install OpenVPN

sudo apt-get install openvpn -y

Reboot to make sure your tunnel adapter gets installed

sudo reboot

SSH in again and enter the OpenVPN folder to store your IPVanish configs and login details (insecure but convenient)

cd /etc/openvpn

Download the IPVanish VPN certificate file

sudo wget http://www.ipvanish.com/software/configs/ca.ipvanish.com.crt

Choose IPVanish ovpn files to use from here depending on which country you want to connect through.

Right click and copy the link to use below for copying the configuration file

sudo wget https://www.ipvanish.com/software/configs/ipvanish-ES-Madrid-mad-a01.ovpn

Create a file for your login credentials, this is not particularly secure but it is convenient

sudo nano /etc/openvpn/login.txt

Paste your IPVanish username and format like this, if you got VPN from UsenetServer add @usenetserver to username

username
password

Ctrl+X, Y and Enter to save

Add Google's DNS servers or you won't be able to use DNS on your device

echo "nameserver 8.8.8.8" | sudo tee -a /etc/resolv.conf
echo "nameserver 8.8.4.4" | sudo tee -a /etc/resolv.conf

Make the resolv.conf file immutable (i.e. unchangeable) (source)

sudo chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf

Try establishing an OpenVPN connection to IPVanish specifying the ovpn file you wish to use and the login file you created

sudo openvpn --config /etc/openvpn/ipvanish-ES-Madrid-mad-a01.ovpn --auth-user-pass /etc/openvpn/login.txt

You should see something along these lines if the OpenVPN IPVanish connection was successful

Wed Oct 21 16:41:44 2015 /sbin/ip route add 81.171.69.2/32 via 192.168.40.1
Wed Oct 21 16:41:44 2015 /sbin/ip route add 0.0.0.0/1 via 172.20.32.1
Wed Oct 21 16:41:44 2015 /sbin/ip route add 128.0.0.0/1 via 172.20.32.1
Wed Oct 21 16:41:44 2015 Initialization Sequence Completed

You will need to start a new SSH session to check the IPVanish IP address

wget http://ipecho.net/plain -O - -q ; echo

You should see output like this

81.171.69.45

Autoconnect IPVanish OpenVPN on Start

You are going to add the command to /etc/rc.local so you autoconnect to IPVanish VPN servers

sudo nano /etc/rc.local

At the bottom add this code before exit 0, there should only be one exit 0

sleep 5
cd /etc/openvpn
sudo openvpn --config /etc/openvpn/ipvanish-ES-Madrid-mad-a01.ovpn --auth-user-pass /etc/openvpn/login.txt
exit 0

Ctrl+X, Y and Enter to save