OpenVPN for PPC Changelog

2.1rc7a maintenance build

synchronized codebase with main branch, bringing this up to date with 2.1rc7a. no significant changes other than supporting options in that release of openvpn.exe

2.1rc2e maintenance build

synchronized codebase with main branch, bringing this up to date with 2.1rc2e. I haven't personally added anything to it, but it picks up all fixes from the main branch of 2.1. future work I'm going to focus on in the short term is: * various bugs in the controlling gui (OpenVPN Connection Manager) causing 'invisible' vpn sessions. * re-engineer the controlling gui (OpenVPN Connection Manager) to either be in .NET or native SDK. This is for preparation to possibly support other non-PocketPC platforms like Smartphone. I might also rename it just because the name choice unfortunately collides with Windows Connection Manager, and why would I want that? * CE6 support; been meaning to do this for a while

2.1 will be used for further work; 2.0.5 stopped

I'm going to continue work in the 2.1 branch only, and discontinue 2.0.5. Really, 2.1.0 is quite stable and is backwards compatible with 2.0.x servers, so it saves me a bunch of time doing merges. I've tested 2.1.0 much more than in the last build and use it more or less daily on my PPC6700. The 2.0.5 build is still available if you need it.

This build mostly tracks changes in the official 2.1.0 OpenVPN project. The Windows Connection Manger code was moved into openvpn.exe proper (no visible change to the end user). I'll document this feature forthwith, and intend to rework this whole web site sometime this week as it has gotten a bit behind reality...

2.1 port added and minor fixes

Continuing work has been shifted to the 2.1 rc branch of openvpn. The 2.0.5-derived code is being left as-is despite outstanding issues because 2.1 is very stable and it's too much to maintain the two branches in the time I have to invest. I'd suggest using 2.1 unless you just can't get it to work and you could get 2.0.5 to work.

Aside from picking up openvpn 2.1 features, there have been some minor fixes/changes:

fix printout problem when cannot open device and using --dev-node (previously printed trash)

Minor enhancement to allow specifying adapter name (e.g. "TAP Device 1" with --dev-node as alternative to device name (e.g. TAP1: )

Windows Connection Manager work-around

Workaround for PPP adapter behaviour where IP is not on the the same subnet as the Gateway. This caused route setup problems when using redirect-gateway over some dialup connections (this depends on how the provider configures their service).

Provide capability to use the Windows Connection Manager (henceforth WCM to save reading) to get network connection that VPN will tunnel through. This was not previously done, and led to dropped connections that were not on 'zero cost' networks; e.g. dialup and phone networks. Some explanation is in order:

WCM is a Windows Mobile contraption (i.e. there isn't one on desktop). It's supposed to make connecting easier by having an application say where it wants to go and then it will figure out which network card to turn on based on some internal algorithm. It will also drop a network connection if it finds itself to have a 'better' one on-hand.

Previously, openvpn had used whatever network happened to be on at the time it started, which is how it worked on desktop. Later, after it had connected, a new virtual NIC (i.e. the TAP adapter) would be brought into the 'media connected' state. So there are two adapters whilst connected: the physical one that sends the tunnel over the Internet, and the virtual one that provides the tunnel implementation.

After this, when another application (such as PocketIE or MSTSC) asks WCM to make sure there's some way to communicate, it notices that it has two adapters, and one of them it thinks is more costly than the other, so it shuts it down the one it feels is more costly.

To work with WCM I added some more settings to specify:

use the connection manager; I put this in mostly so if someone finds that this is problematic they can turn it off. My expectation is that this will be fine to always leave on.
Which network to request. You should select the real network you want; e.g. ..

Greek added, icons changed

Initial Greek GUI translation; thanks to Nikos Zaharioudakis for the translation effort. Help file pending. Icons changed; thanks to Mathias Sundman of OpenVPN GUI for permission to use the icons from his project, which are decidedly better-looking Added additional icon state to show that a connection is in progress. Added main-level menu item to stop all VPN instance. This provides convenience over drilling down through the GUI just to stop the tunnel.

German translation added

Initial German GUI translation; thanks to Boris Friedrichs for the translation effort. Help file pending.

reworked language dll mechanism for WM5 problems

Reworked language dll. WM5 binaries did not seem to enjoy the resources in an MFC Extension dll. This manifested itself especially with crashes whenever a dialog box was presented whose resource came from the language dll (including About, and Authentication). I converted this to a resource only (no code) dll. Most folks probably did not notice the About box, however folks with password protected private keys and/or the need to authenticate with the server definitely would. Interestingly, WM2003 does not exhibit the problem.

Corrected help file linkage in Portuguese build, along with some minor text changes.

portuguese, about box fix, and CAB installers

Added localized build for the language:

Portuguese

Thanks go to Pedro Cancela for performing this translation.

Temporary work-around for WM5 About Box anomaly reported by Dr Fix. WM5 does not seems to play well with dialogs in a MFC 'extension' dll. For the short term I replaced the About Box with a message box.

Re-added CAB installers to files page. Some folks prefer CAB installers (because they don't use Active Sync) and they're also good for installing directly from the web to your device.

enabled auth-user-pass file functionality

auth-user-pass can take a file that contains the user name and password to use (avoiding the dialog box). This functionality was absent in previous builds because a build option was not specified to include it.

minor updates to French translation.