RPi as WIFI Access Point and VPN router

Question

I'm trying to set up my RPi as Wifi Access Point and to connect as client to a OpenVPN server.

• The connection to the VPN server works fine as long I use the Midori. I followed this steps:
  PI as a VPN router for local machines
• The RPi as Wifi Access Point works fine. I can access the web via my mobile devices connected to my RPi (as long the OpenVPN connection is down). I followed this steps:
  http://learn.adafruit.com/setting-up-a-raspberry-pi-as-a-wifi-access-point/overview

However, as soon I start OpenVPN my devices associated with the RPi WIFI no longer can access the web. I assume the problem lies in the routing stuff, but am not sure.

My configuration...
WLAN0 -> connected to the internet router
WLAN1 -> WIFI Access Point

Any help is appreciated as I'm left helpless. Thanks.

Answer 1

I managed to do this with my RPI, although my VPN connection was running over the Ethernet port, rather than over a second wireless interface.

I wrote up the details of how I got it working here: http://alphaloop.blogspot.com/2014/01/raspberry-pi-as-vpn-wireless-access.html

The main thing that tripped me up was that I tried to use my local router's DNS for any connected devices, but I found that when the VPN connection was up, all traffic from the devices got routed over the VPN, which effectively meant that they were trying to look up a local IP address on the Internet.

I got round it by setting up bind9 as a DNS server on the RPI and pointing the connected devices to that. It might be worth seeing if this fixes your problem.