Save Password in OpenVPN for Automatic Login

Xavier Mustin

Administrator
Staff member
#1
By default, OpenVPN does not save the username and password which requires you to input them in each time you connect to the server. This is good from a security perspective, but there are sometimes where it is required to have this information saved to permit automatic logins to OpenVPN.

If you need to save the username and password to a VPN connection, follow the steps below.

  1. Navigate to your config folder for OpenVPN. Some common paths for this folder are:
    • Windows - C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenVPN\config
    • Linux - /etc/openvpn
    • Mac (Tunnelblick) - ~/Library/Application Support/Tunnelblick/Configurations


    If you have a subfolder within the config folder where your configuration files/certs reside, make sure to dive down to that folder.
  2. Create a new text file in this folder. We'll name ours "auth.txt". The contents of this text file should simply be two lines. The first line should be your username, and the second should be your password. Save this file.
  3. Now open your OpenVPN config file, which should be in the same folder, in a text editor (if on Windows use Notepad++ instead of Notepad). These files typically end in a .ovpn extension. Find the line that says "auth-user-pass" and change it to "auth-user-pass auth.txt", where "auth.txt" is the name of the file containing your username and password. Save this file.
  4. Try to connect to OpenVPN. You may need to restart the OpenVPN client and you should now connect without a username and password prompt!
 
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