- #Viscosity windows pre login install#
- #Viscosity windows pre login windows 10#
- #Viscosity windows pre login password#
This was the whole point of our setup: the employee's laptops can roam around for years without the need to come back home for maintenance. The end result is, the remote computer is connected automatically soon enough in the Windows boot not only to allow domain logons, but it also processes the Group Policy (when the bandwidth is sufficient). Remember, by doing "start-before-logon" you are actually connecting and authenticating computers, not users.
This file has ACL limited access only to Administrators and Local System. On the client side the -auth-user-pass points to an ASCII file with computer name and its secret string. The server side has a simple script (I can provide samples for Linux and Windows) with a list of approved computer names and a long secret string per each computer. Therefore, we no longer use client certificates but -verify-client-cert none + -auth-user-pass to authenticate.
#Viscosity windows pre login install#
But, asking employees to go get a new certificate to the Windows Server CA before the current one expires, install it to the Local System's Certificate Store, then update the -cryptoapicert hash in the ovpn file simply did not scale. Probably, the OpenVPNService could do the job too.įor years, we have been using manually managed certificates to authenticate. The service is configured to depend on Dhcp and tap0901 services just like the OpenVPNService. We use the NSSM as the service wrapper for this purpose. The OpenVPN is started automatically as a service running as the Local System account. We use OpenVPN to connect domain computers to organizations before user logs on.
#Viscosity windows pre login windows 10#
So, it's useful for lots of other things and basically essential for a proper log on.įurthermore, a Start VPN Before Logon feature would be even more useful now with Windows 10, because Windows 10 now even lets you connect to wireless networks before logging on to Windows. However, you can access network resources that do not require domain validation. When you logon to Windows by using cached logon information, if the domain controller is unavailable to validate your account, you cannot access network resources that require domain validation.
#Viscosity windows pre login password#
Start Before Logon lets the administrator control the use of login scripts, password caching, mapping network drives to local drives, and more. However, this "start before logon" feature may be needed for setups where the corporate policy does not allow caching of domain login credentials. So, a Start VPN Before Logon feature would be essential in that case.įurthermore, the crendential cache storage of Windows is wrote: In some circumstances this might not be possible without VPN though. So you need to log on at least once before the credentials are being cached. So, would it also be possible to have OpenVPN prompt for the VPN credentials when clicking on that button, so that a user can enter his VPN credentials (username + password) and connect via VPN before logging on to wrote:Īlso such a feature is often not required for domain login: as Windows caches domain login credentials, the user can login and then start the tunnel even if the DC is not reachable before the tunnel is up.įor the credentials to be cached, you first need to be able to log on to the domain controller for Windows to be able to cache the credentials. So, Windows does seem to have a "native" button for this on the log on screen (which is also being utilized by Cisco An圜onnect). Windows itself also does offer a similar feature: Is OpenVPN also able to offer a prompt for the VPN credentials before logging on to Windows?Ĭisco An圜onnect does have that feature, it's called "Start Before Logon" or in short "SBL", see for example:
having to authenticate on a domain controller). Apparently this is being done by having OpenVPN running as a service:Įstablishing a VPN connection before logging on to Windows is especially useful when needing to log on to a domain joined machine (i.e. Apparently OpenVPN seems to be able to establish a VPN connection before a user logs on to Windows.