I know the title doesn't describe the problem but it is more complicated than a title...
I was following the OpenVPN tutorial from Hak5 that was posted recently. I followed it VERY closely besides naming my server and client differently. I know my way around Linux though not a pro but here is what I have tried (I tried these all under root just in case).
# ip addr
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default
link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
inet6 ::1/128 scope host
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: eth0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UP group default qlen 1000
link/ether fa:16:3e:95:61:ab brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
inet SERVERIP/32 brd SERVERIP scope global eth0
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
inet6 fe80::f816:3eff:fe95:61ab/64 scope link
valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
# ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr fa:16:3e:95:61:ab
inet addr:SERVERIP Bcast:SERVERIP Mask:255.255.255.255
inet6 addr: fe80::f816:3eff:fe95:61ab/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:109196 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:90345 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:11802396 (11.2 MiB) TX bytes:13847838 (13.2 MiB)
lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:65536 Metric:1
RX packets:2 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:2 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:88 (88.0 B) TX bytes:88 (88.0 B)
# ufw status
Status: active
To Action From
-- ------ ----
22 ALLOW Anywhere
1194/udp ALLOW Anywhere
# ps aux | grep openvpn
root 7356 0.0 0.0 12664 1544 pts/0 S+ 18:46 0:00 grep openvpn
# nmap -sU 127.0.0.1
Starting Nmap 6.47 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2016-07-19 18:47 EDT
Nmap scan report for localhost (127.0.0.1)
Host is up (0.000012s latency).
Not shown: 999 closed ports
PORT STATE SERVICE
5353/udp open|filtered zeroconf
Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 3.60 seconds
# dmesg | grep openvpn
# service openvpn status
● openvpn.service - OpenVPN service
Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/openvpn.service; enabled)
Active: active (exited) since Mon 2016-07-18 23:02:06 EDT; 19h ago
Process: 494 ExecStart=/bin/true (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 494 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
CGroup: /system.slice/openvpn.service
nmap scanning from outside the VPN also doesn't show anything open besides SSH. What I think is wrong is that there is no tun interface.