Recently, I ran into a strange problem while working on a Spryker platform project. The client had given me AWS and VPN access, and I needed to create a temporary job in Jenkins to test a console command. Everything seemed fine—until it wasn’t.

The Problem

On my Ubuntu machine, every time I tried to save a new Jenkins job, it would time out. This wasn’t related to any specific command or job—it could happen with any job. What made it especially frustrating was that I had never encountered this issue before. I was used to working on a Mac and was sure everything would work the same on Ubuntu. I hadn’t considered that the same OpenVPN configuration might require extra tweaking on a different operating system.

What I Discovered

After some digging, I found that the problem was linked to my OpenVPN configuration. It turned out that my VPN settings needed a small adjustment to work smoothly with Jenkins on Ubuntu.

The Fix

The solution was simple. I added two lines to my OpenVPN configuration file:

tun-mtu 1400
mssfix 1360

These settings adjust the maximum transmission unit (MTU) for the tunnel and fix the maximum segment size (MSS) for packets. With these adjustments, the VPN connection became more stable, and Jenkins no longer timed out when saving jobs.

Final Thoughts

Sometimes, the smallest changes can resolve the most perplexing issues. If you ever face a similar timeout problem with Jenkins on Ubuntu while using a VPN, give these OpenVPN settings a try. It saved my day, and I hope it can help you too!

Feel free to share your experiences or ask questions in the comments below. Happy coding!