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Broken wordpress/web server after setting up openVPN

Posted on November 26, 2015

Apache

VPN

WordPress

DigitalOcean

By roozfeiz

I had a functioning wordpress multisite droplet (IP: 188.166.85.97) and installed openVPN following the instructions in this page:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-an-openvpn-server-on-ubuntu-14-04

Now I realized that my webserver is not responding (I cannot open any page). Same thing has happened to the wordpress, it is either broken or not repsonding.

My main concern is to have my webserver&wordpress back to life. I do not mind to disable or undo the openVPN installation.

I did not find much information about conflict between openVPN and wordpress instalation. I am even not sure if I understand what has gone wrong. Can anyone advice please?

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Jonathan Tittle

November 26, 2015

@roozfeiz

You’re still able to SSH in to the Droplet, correct? If so, login to the CLI and run:

sudo killall -9 openvpn

and then restart Apache. What the above command does is simply terminate all OpenVPN processes that may be running, effectively shutting it down.

You can confirm this by issuing the command:

top

and then pressing SHIFT+M followed by C (as in the letter) on your keyboard. This sorts processes by RAM usage and then expands the process in the far right column so that you can see everything that’s running in detail. If it’s running, you’ll either see the user associated with your OpenVPN config in the far left column or the OpenVPN process in the far right.

If you see OpenVPN still running, while still in top, press k and find the ID of the process in the far left column, type it in and hit enter. You’ll be asked how to kill it off, simply hit enter (leaving it blank). If that doesn’t work, run the same again and enter -9 or 15.

Once you run the above and restart Apache, let me know if you’re up and running. If not, please run top, press SHIFT+M followed by C and upload a screenshot to imgur or another image hosting service and link to it in your reply.

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