man page could need improvements in the --keepalive section

[zmi]

I guess there's a small bug in the man page of openvpn regarding the "keepalive" example:

--keepalive n m

A helper directive designed to simplify the expression of --ping and --ping-restart in server mode configurations.

For example, --keepalive 10 60 expands as follows:

if mode server:

ping 10
ping-restart 120
push "ping 10"
push "ping-restart 60"

else

ping 10
ping-restart 60

Would openvpn really double the value for "ping-restart" in server mode, or shouldn't that read "ping-restart 60" instead "ping-restart 120"?

[David Sommerseth]

No, this is correct. The server side does 2*60 on ping-restart. A long while ago, I proposed this change - but it never got any attention since, so I never cared for following it up.

​http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.network.openvpn.devel/2814

But that explains a little bit more how this happens. We can rather discuss how to make the documentation better at explaining this.

[Samuli Seppänen]

214 is a duplicate of this.

[Gert Döring]

Mr. Ticket Owner, how to proceed here...?

[Samuli Seppänen]

Maybe we should just mention that "... in server mode the value of ping-restart is doubled; in the above example this translates to 120 (60*2)".

I can provide a patch if this approach is fine.

[Samuli Seppänen]

This has been fixed a long time ago. Closing as fixed.