It may be a dumb question, but have you edited the vpn shell script? As downloaded, it looks like this: #!/bin/sh sudo gainroot cd /etc/openvpn openvpn --config n800remote.ovpn which will work using the config file created in the howto. Since you are using a different setup, it looks to me like at the very least you would need to edit it. Try this: #!/bin/sh sudo gainroot cd /usr/sbin/ openvpn --config /etc/openvpn/openvpn.conf Then, from /home/user, (which is where vpn should be stored) try running ./vpn That shoud make you root, move you to the folder in which openvpn is located, and finally run openvpn, with the config file openvpn.conf located in /etc/openvpn/ Does that work?