1UPGRADING FROM 2.3-ALPHA1 AND EARLIER
2
3OpenVPN Windows installer went through major changes in
42.3-alpha2. To avoid any unexpected behavior, it is strongly
5suggested to upgrade as follows.
6
7First backup configuration files and certificates from your
8current installation; by default they're in
9
10    C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\config (32-bit Windows)
11    C:\Program Files (x86)\OpenVPN\config (64-bit Windows)
12
13After this, stop the openvpn-gui or the openvpn service
14wrapper, if either of them is running and uninstall OpenVPN.
15Finally, remove the OpenVPN install directory entirely (e.g.
16using Windows Explorer as administrator).
17
18Finally, install the new version of OpenVPN and copy over
19your configuration files and certificates, which now go to
20
21    C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\config
22
23provided you did not install the 32-bit version on 64-bit
24Windows.
25
26IMPORTANT NOTE FOR WINDOWS VISTA/7 USERS
27
28Note that on Windows Vista, you will need to run the OpenVPN
29GUI with administrator privileges, so that it can add routes
30to the routing table that are pulled from the OpenVPN server.
31You can do this by right-clicking on the OpenVPN GUI
32desktop icon, and selecting "Run as administrator".
33
34GENERAL QUICKSTART FOR WINDOWS
35
36The OpenVPN Client requires a configuration file
37and key/certificate files. You should obtain
38these and save them to OpenVPN's configuration
39directory, usually C:\Program Files\OpenVPN\config.
40
41You can run OpenVPN as a Windows system service or by using
42the client GUI. To use the OpenVPN GUI, double click on the
43desktop icon or start menu icon. The OpenVPN GUI is a
44system-tray applet, so an icon for the GUI will appear in
45the lower-right corner of the screen. Right click on the
46system tray icon, and a menu should appear showing the names
47of your OpenVPN configuration files, and giving you the
48option to connect.
49
50BUILDING OPENVPN FOR WINDOWS
51
52Official OpenVPN Windows releases are cross-compiled on Linux using the
53openvpn-build buildsystem:
54
55    https://community.openvpn.net/openvpn/wiki/BuildingUsingGenericBuildsystem
56
57First setup the build environment as shown in the above article. Then fetch the
58openvpn-build repository:
59
60    git clone https://github.com/OpenVPN/openvpn-build.git
61
62Review the build configuration:
63
64    openvpn-build/generic/build.vars
65    openvpn-build/windows-nsis/build-complete.vars
66
67Build (unsigned):
68
69    cd openvpn-build/windows-nsis
70    ./build-complete
71
72Build (signed):
73
74    cd openvpn-build/windows-nsis
75    ./build-complete --sign --sign-pkcs12=<pkcs12-file>\
76    --sign-pkcs12-pass=<pkcs12-file-password> \
77    --sign-timestamp="<timestamp-url>"
78