hello there
Quite a bit of messing about trying to get a VPN working on OSMC. Can someone possibly do a “port” of openelecs brilliant VPN manager?
Would be awesome and save a lot of messing about. Im building a few Pis for mates but cant really use OSMC (which I love) as it’s a bit complicated to setup/maintain. The VPN manager is simple, just install, select provider, chuck your user/password done. It reconnects on boot etc etc.
cheers
please dont link that site hes an asshat that promotes pirate crap
as for your question as soon as conmann gets the changes nessary im sure that a vpn option will turn up in myosmc
ps. do me a favor and remove the link.
neh bother.chief
just managed to get it working anyhoo. it was complaining of not having openvpn so did sudo apt-get install openvpn; now it looks like its working… but yea would be good to have the option in myosmc.
cheers
OpenVPN works fine, Just follow these simple steps written for noobs, after you login to your OSMC device via SSH:
Skip the optional steps 4.1 and 5, unzip and ca-certificates are already present in OSMC.
Note in step 4, you need to download the .ovpn files of your VPN provider. In this step it shows the link to the .ovpn files of NordVPN but you might use a different provider. Other than that, this guide works for all OpenVPN providers.
BUT the real request should be: a way to select which applications should run via OpenVPN. It does not make sense at all to have all internet traffic from OSMC to go via VPN. For certain applications, geo is not an issue, privacy is (transmission). For certain legal streams like BBC, geo is very important, while for Dutch tv you need a different geo than for BBC. And for other applications you don’t need a VPN at all because there are no privacy concerns or geo restrictions.
well yea those “simple” step might be ok for you or me, but your average Joe would just laugh and be on the phone to me eating up my precious time!
I dont know how reliable the location checker on VPN man is but it’s showing Im all connected and seem to be in the right region.
Average Joe really has no need for a VPN on a media center…
easy to use VPN Manager for OSMC would be nice!
do a pr on github if its that easy or stop crying cause there are far more pressing things then vpn manager for OSMC
This is something I’d love to add, but don’t have time for at the moment.
Adding support for VPN via ConnMan should be trivial, it’s documented in the ConnMan documentation. It’s very simple to do via a service file, but time will need to be taken for us to get it done with a simple GUI, and is something I’d want to do after the My OSMC re-write. We’d also have to set up OpenVPN and ensure that it works properly.
My precious time is currently spent developing other parts of OSMC. Without sounding harsh, OpenVPN does work on OSMC, it’s just not as seamless as other parts of OSMC. There are things that need fixing that don’t work at all before I get a leisurely Sunday to look at something like OpenVPN support in OSMC
Thanks for your understanding
Sam
everyone should be allowed privacy. not something reserved for the tech savy.
fair enough Sam, not asking anyone to drop everything to do this. Appreciate all the hard work that goes into this. Just a user-land observation which Im sure the masses would benefit from and boost the popularity of OSMC. After all, a better user experience I would think should be something to strive for, no?
Ah those leisurely Sundays a long distant memory since I had kids 
Out of interest how would conman cause issues as mine seems to be working?
If ConnMan is not aware of the VPN, route may be adjusted periodically for wispr functionality, and in turn, break the VPN.
Sure. But there are plenty of other, more important things that would improve the user experience ;).
Configuring a VPN in OSMC currently involves editing a text file. I wouldn’t say that’s tech savvy – most people that know what a VPN is should know how to edit a text file. But with that said – VPN services found online won’t offer true privacy, they’re only real usefulness is to avoid geographically blocked content. If you think your online activity is more secure or private using a third party VPN, then this is not the case.
Google Brian Hornsby. He has addon to control open VPN within kodi GUI, I’ve used it for a while and it is basic but works fine.
Thank you for this. I’ve been hunting all over trying to find a way to get openvpn/vpn manager to work on OSMC with PIA, this finally did it…and yes even for a noob like me it was easy.
I found this today, as yet to install, but he mentions that it would work on OSMC.
seems promising, I’ve made a request to add Cryptostorm VPN
I tested it on OSMC when he first started creating the addon so I can say once the packages are installed for OSMC It does work to a degree, but not without problems !!
As Sam mentioned, the addon uses the bash terminal commands to connect and disconnect. ConnMan on OSMC doesn’t like this too much and you get random disconnects and complete loss of network for me this happened about 1-2 times a day (which comes back after a reboot).
Also if you want to use the VPNs DNS on OSMC you will also have to edit your config files to suit, and install the “resolvconf” package, which isn’t documented in the readme.
I never found a way of restoring my original DNS as when the VPN connection is disconnected it’s murdered with the Killall-9 command.
The best solution for OSMC is using ConnMan
When the VPN disconnects I map button to script to put my local name server address (default gateway) into etc/resolv.conf thus restoring ISP connection.
I think its a nice unintended way of having a vpn killswitch implemented. At least I know when VPN ever disconnects there will be no leaking until I manually restore connection with click of button.
Hello I run kodi on Mac mini, but I’m looking to upgrade… I run VPN/ipvanish through Mac OS, simple setup.
I’m not advanced enough to be editing files, etc. before I buy Vero 4K, I’d like to know if any progress has been made on a “avg joe/easy” GUI VPN setup for a Vero4K box. It’s the only thing holding me back from buying one today.
Progress hath been made.
It will come in the new My OSMC. But you won’t be able to configure it via a GUI for a little bit of time yet. The good news is that quite a few users use OpenVPN with Vero 4K and we can get you set up pretty easily.
The Vero 4K is on sale until the end of the week, so now is a good time to grab one 
Sam
Thanks for the response, you def helped me decide on pulling the trigger. I’m new to this, but seems like you are a helpful bunch. Secondly, While I currently have a non-HDR 4K tv, I want to future proof my investment, so that down the road I could stream HDR content via Kodi addons, on my next TV purchase. For now my current concern was VPN, but sounds like things are coming along.
I’ll head over to the website & check out the sale now.