How to disable OpenVPN from autostarting at boot-up or reboot?

Question

I am using Ubuntu 12.04.2 LTS, 64-bit, OpenVPN client 2.3.1

How do I prevent OpenVPN from autostarting at boot-up or reboot?

score 41 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 02 '13 at 12:29

You have two options:

Run:
```
sudo update-rc.d openvpn disable
```
Then you'll have to run sudo service openvpn start to manually start the VPN.
Or edit the file /etc/default/openvpn
```
sudo gedit /etc/default/openvpn
```
And uncomment the line:
```
#AUTOSTART="none"
```
So it looks like:
```
AUTOSTART="none"
```
Then you'll have to run sudo service openvpn start <vpn-name> to manually start the VPN. <vpn-name> is the config file name without .conf.

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 29 '23 at 22:14

Nothing on this page helped me, but it was pinned by Google.

The command that fixed my problem:

sudo systemctl disable openvpn@client.service

I am running Ubuntu 20.10 with Openvpn v. 2.4.9

2 Answers2