Azure VPN Client fails with "Couldn't set DNS server/domains" on Linux, but works on Windows
16:44 06 May 2026

I have been using the same Azure VPN Config on a Linux machine and a Windows machine for about a year. Recently, the company I am working for did some DNS changes related to the VPN. The changes were described to me as:

We changed the DNS server on the network. The first server points to a private DNS resolver. The second server is Azure DNS, which is the default.

The next time I tried logging on, after this update, I receive the following error message:

Connection failed: Couldn't set DNS server/domains.

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The log shows the following information:

level=error msg="Replace: No data exists for the key in accessor" layer=MSAL
level=info msg="Export: Updating cache" layer=MSAL
level=info msg="Acquired token interactively for [xxxxxxx]" layer=MSAL
level=info msg="Found cached account for [xxxxxxx]" layer=MSAL
level=info msg="Acquired access token silently for [xxxxxxx]" layer=MSAL
level=info msg="Found cached account for [xxxxxxx]" layer=MSAL
level=info msg="Acquired access token silently for [xxxxxxx]" layer=MSAL

The exact same VPN config still works fine on Windows. I have not done any changes on the Linux machine, so it seems very likely that this is related to the DNS changes that were made.

I have tried to manually add the DNS' IPs to the VPN config, to no avail:


  
    
      [xxxxxxx]
    
    
      [xxxxxxx]
    
  
  
  

Any idea of what might be wrong here?

azure vpn azure-vpn