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Not able to Edit server.conf file

Posted on February 25, 2016

I’m trying to install openvpn to my droplets . I have successfully installed both openvpn and easy-rsa

apt-get  install openvpn easy-rsa

But when it comes to editing the server.conf file, that’s where I get stuck. Once I run this command to open the server.conf with Vim editor:

vim /etc/openvpn/server.conf

I’m getting a black screen with blue ‘dashes’ (-) all the way to the bottom and E35: NO previous regular expression.

Kindly let me know where I’m going wrong.

Note: The problem started when I entered an SSH key on a different droplet.



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Thanks. let me try that.

It looks like you’re missing a step here. You are currently seeing those dashes indicating that those lines don’t exist as you are creating a new blank file. The default install of openvpn does not create a server.conf file in /etc/openvpn. You’ll need to grab the sample config file from elsewhere in the filesystem where it is compressed.

gunzip -c /usr/share/doc/openvpn/examples/sample-config-files/server.conf.gz > /etc/openvpn/server.conf

This guide will assist you.

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