client byte count should be obtainable per connection

[bwess]

In setups where users are unprivileged and OpenVPN client processes are started privileged GUIs have to rely on the OpenVPN processes not exiting to control and continue reusing them for many connections. Using the bytecount command in the management interface only the total amount of bytes (which maybe represent several connections) can be requested and a GUI may not be able to calculate per-connection data since it can be disconnected and reconnected to the same openvpn instance.

The OpenVPN management interface should do one of the following:

• reset the counter when it receives SIGUSR1 or SIGHUP
• display both total data and data since the last disconnect in bytecount output
• offer a command to reset the bytecount

[Samuli Seppänen]

For what purpose would these per-connection byte counters be used for in the GUI?

[Gert Döring]

Well, the feature is "show how much traffic has been transmitted in *this* session".

We're not going to implement it anyway, as this is basically a use case (openvpnserv running openvpn with privileges, the GUI connecting to the already-running openvpn.exe process) that will go away with d12fk's interactive service.

Since this is something we would implement in 2.4, at best, and 2.4 will have the new service which gives the same information (because openvpn.exe would be restarted), this will not give benefits.