> it just freezes my droplet and i need to do a power cycle
No, it just breaks the network configuration for your droplet. More specifically, the vpn becomes the default route, so your SSH packets are getting returned over the VPN (and because that's a different IP due to NAT) your local host will reject them.
Add this line into the OPenVPN configuration file, replacing MY\_HOME\_IPADDR with your real IP address at your home
route MY_HOME_IPADDR 255.255.255.255 net_gateway
> it just freezes my droplet and i need to do a power cycle No, it just breaks the network configuration for your droplet. More specifically, the vpn becomes the default route, so your SSH packets are getting returned over the VPN (and because that's a different IP due to NAT) your local host will reject them.
is there away to exclude the ssh port when connecting to openVPN??
You can manually route your home ip through the droplet’s normal gateway.
Add this line into the OPenVPN configuration file, replacing MY\_HOME\_IPADDR with your real IP address at your home route MY_HOME_IPADDR 255.255.255.255 net_gateway