Helllo, 

I'm new to unRAID and have run into an issue regarding the shares and a Windows 10 VM. 

 

I've got the array up and working with parity and cache. I've also got a "Media" share up and working; it is accessible as a network share inside the VM. However; when I connect to my VPN (NordVPN), I lose connectivity with the local LAN. I need to figure out a way around this...

 

I am not at all comfortable with Dockers, I just can't get my head around them yet; so I'd really like to stick with VMs and avoid Dockers until I have my setup going and can play with them.

 

Is there a way to make some kind of network bridge for just Windows Explorer to use? Or is there a way to separate network traffic so all of the internet activity would be behind the VPN, except Windows Explorer so I would still have access to the local LAN and shares?

 

Thanks for any help. Let me know if I need to clarify anything. 

I am not sure why you lose the connectivity to the local LAN?     I have a similar setup and also am using NordVPN but I do not lose access to shares on the LAN.

I am currently having the same issue.  I can't access the shared drives from windows when NordVPN is active.

Me too unfortunately. On my Mac computers this doesn't seem to be an issue. However, I can still access the dashboard when using the IP-address assigned by my router to my Unraid server, it's just that the .local-address doens't work. But it gets troublesome when other software on my Windows machine needs to access the server directly - it simply refuses.

This is almost certainly an issue with the settings on the VPN client.  There is typically a setting to say whether local LAN access should be allowed while the VPN is active.

Thanks itimpi! Seems to have worked to enable the setting "Allow remote access while connected to VPN" under Setting -> Connection in NordVPN. That might be the solutions for @justdrew424 as well.

Thanks for the tip guys.  I turned on the option "Allow remote access while connected to VPN" but it still does not work for me.  I'll keep searching and looking for another setting.

 

Thanks

Drew

On 2/14/2023 at 10:16 PM, justdrew424 said:

Thanks for the tip guys.  I turned on the option "Allow remote access while connected to VPN" but it still does not work for me.  I'll keep searching and looking for another setting.

 

Thanks

Drew

Hi Drew,

 

Unfortunately my solution ended up seizing to work for one reason or another. Fortunately I have found another way to do this, and I remembered you were dealing with the same issue as I did, so I wanted to pass it by you as well as it might help out. 

First off, I went to the configuration menu 'Apps & features'. There click on 'Programs and Features' and click on 'Turn Windows Features on or off'. In that menu I went to the SMB 1.0 setting, and enabled the client and server, after which you should restart your computer. 

If you open the file explore (This PC). You should be able to click 'Add a network location'. Here you should enter the ip-address of your unraid server on your local network, NOT the name of your unraid server. So i.e. \\192.168.1.110 instead of \\tower. 

What ultimately did the trick for me was also adding the name of a share that you'd like to access. So in my case I entered "\\192.168.1.110\media". Then I was prompted to enter my username of the server. You could use your admin account I reckon, but I've opted to use an account I've made to access specific shares only. After doing so, all my shares appeared and I've been able to access the Unraid server through that ip-address since. 

If that for some reason STILL doesn't work, you could try Split Tunneling in NordVPN. That way you could allocate only certain apps to the VPN (i.e. qBittorrent & Chrome). That way it should bypass the vpn on other system settings. 

I hope this works for you as well!

Cheers,
Systeembeheerder

Just got NordVPN and had this same problem, but strangely just on one of my three Unraid servers.

 

When NordVPN was on I could browse the GUI of two servers by hostname, but one server GUI was only accessible by IP and not hostname and also couldn't browse to the server in Windows Explorer Network. Any mapped network shares (I map them by hostname instead of IP) were still accessible for the other two servers. I don't have any mapped shares for the server that wasn't accessible. My router still had the IP to hostname mappings for all three servers.

 

Found a fix by disabling the VPN for Windows Explorer after enabling Split tunneling and I can now browse the server in Windows Explorer Network and also access the GUI by hostname.

 

 

Click Add apps: