OpenVPN config on Linux system

However, you can run OpenVPN in the background as well. Use the following command to do that.

sudo openvpn --config client1.ovpn --daemon

To shut down the connection, find the process ID of the process.

$ ps aux | grep openvpn

You will get a similar output.

nobody      4357  0.3  0.0  13468  8432 ?        Ss   15:35   0:00 openvpn --config client1.ovpn --daemon
username    4406  0.0  0.0  17732  2432 pts/0    S+   15:35   0:00 grep --color=auto openvpn

As you can see, the process ID corresponding to the OpenVPN process is 4357. Shut down the VPN connection using the following command to kill the process.

$ sudo kill -9 4357