Are there any better/safer methods to launch the OpenVPN client as a normal user?

Question

I'm trying to connect to an OpenVPN server. It works perfectly when I use root to give out the commands to connect:

openvpn /etc/openvpn/client.conf

but with a normal user I get this error messages in the log:

Aug 15 18:01:43 a openvpn[4755]: OpenVPN 2.1.1 i686-redhat-linux-gnu [SSL] [LZO2] [EPOLL] [PKCS11] built on Jan  5 2010
Aug 15 18:01:43 a openvpn[4755]: WARNING: you are using user/group/chroot/setcon without persist-tun -- this may cause restarts to fail
Aug 15 18:01:43 a openvpn[4755]: WARNING: you are using user/group/chroot/setcon without persist-key -- this may cause restarts to fail
Aug 15 18:01:43 a openvpn[4755]: WARNING: No server certificate verification method has been enabled.  See http://openvpn.net/howto.html#mitm for more info.
Aug 15 18:01:43 a openvpn[4755]: NOTE: OpenVPN 2.1 requires '--script-security 2' or higher to call user-defined scripts or executables
Aug 15 18:01:43 a openvpn[4755]: Control Channel Authentication: using '/home/MYUSERNAME/.cert/shared.key' as a OpenVPN static key file
Aug 15 18:01:43 a openvpn[4755]: LZO compression initialized
Aug 15 18:01:43 a openvpn[4756]: NOTE: UID/GID downgrade will be delayed because of --client, --pull, or --up-delay
Aug 15 18:01:43 a openvpn[4756]: UDPv4 link local: [undef]
Aug 15 18:01:43 a openvpn[4756]: UDPv4 link remote: 111.222.333.444:443
Aug 15 18:01:43 a openvpn[4756]: [vpnserver] Peer Connection Initiated with 192.168.1.1:443
Aug 15 18:01:46 a openvpn[4756]: Note: Cannot ioctl TUNSETIFF tun: Operation not permitted (errno=1)
Aug 15 18:01:46 a openvpn[4756]: Note: Attempting fallback to kernel 2.2 TUN/TAP interface
Aug 15 18:01:46 a openvpn[4756]: Cannot allocate TUN/TAP dev dynamically
Aug 15 18:01:46 a openvpn[4756]: Exiting

So it looks like I need root priviledges to run the mentioned command.

Solutions that I've googled:
- setuid bit: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/RemoveSETUID - not good anymore
- "visudo" as root, then append this to the file:

MYUSERNAME ALL = NOPASSWD: /usr/sbin/openvpn

Then the "MYUSERNAME" user can launch the "sudo /usr/sbin/openvpn" binary with root priviledges.

p.s.1:

$ which openvpn
/usr/sbin/openvpn

p.s.2: Using Fedora 14/bash.

THE QUESTION:
- Are there any better/safer methods to launch the OpenVPN client as a normal user?

Answer 1

OpenVPN needs root access because it needs to asign IP addresses to your newly created interface.

If you are running on a graphical mode, you could try NetworkManager plugin for openvpn, which runs pretty well and lets your vpn just one click away. Some users think that NetworkManager is a little bit intrusive (but that is OFT).

Other than that, your best shot is, as you stated, sudo. Far better than playing with setuid bit, IMHO.