There are many reasons that a VPN will be necessary. One example is where Josh uses a satellite internet connection that does not allow for reliable port forwarding from the internet to his AllStarLink node. Installation of OpenVPN should allow us to make his node a part of my network at home where I can then forward certain ports on to him.
The ACID distro provides an easy way to get started using AllStarLink or private nodes. It does so by combining the necessary software on a single disk in a way where it’s already configured to play nicely together. However, this is accomplished by the use of some very old software (old in software terms). It’s a compromise that allows one to quickly and easily get a node running at the cost of security and the loss of some convenience in other areas.
On a modern Linux distro one would simply use the package manager to install openvpn as a start. Not so in the CentOS based ACID. Yum simply reports that the package isn’t found. But there is a way around this:
rpm -Uhv http://apt.sw.be/redhat/el5/en/i386/rpmforge/RPMS/rpmforge-release-0.3.6-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm
Following this you should be able to use yum to install openvpn and a number of other handy packages.