USERGUIDE.md

vopono User Guide

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Usage

Applications will be run as the current user by default (you can use vopono exec sudo -u USERNAME program as the command to run as another user).

vopono will call sudo if required, it is recommended to run as the current user and let vopono call sudo so that the configuration directories are correctly inferred and the final command is not run as root.

Note that child processes of the application will also be spawned inside the network namespace and so use the same VPN connection, so you can run entire shell sessions inside vopono.

Wireguard

Install vopono and use vopono sync to create the Wireguard configuration files (and generate a keypair if necessary):

$ yay -S vopono-git
$ vopono sync

Run vopono:

$ vopono exec --provider mullvad --server sweden --protocol wireguard "transmission-gtk"

The server prefix will be searched against available servers (and country names) and a random one will be chosen (and reported in the terminal).

Custom Settings

The sync menu will prompt you for any custom settings (i.e. ports used, and connection protocol for OpenVPN, etc.)

Valid ports for Mullvad Wireguard are: 53, 4000-33433, 33565-51820 and 52000-60000. The same is true for MozillaVPN since it is mostly a wrapper around Mullvad's Wireguard services.

OpenVPN

Install vopono and use vopono sync to create the OpenVPN configuration files and server lists.

$ yay -S vopono-git
$ vopono sync

Run vopono:

$ vopono exec --provider privateinternetaccess --server poland "curl ifconfig.co/country"
Poland

You can also launch graphical applications like firefox, transmission-gtk, etc. - the network namespace will be cleaned up when the application is terminated. Note you may need to run them as your own user:

$ vopono exec --provider privateinternetaccess --server mexico "firefox"

The server prefix will be searched against available servers (both server names and aliases in the provider's configuration files) and a random one will be chosen (and reported in the terminal).

The sync process will save your credentials to a file in the config directory of the provider, so it can be passed to OpenVPN. If it is missing you will be prompted for your credentials.

For PrivateInternetAccess and AzireVPN these should be the same as your account credentials.

For TigerVPN you can view your OpenVPN credentials online on the "geeks" dashboard. The OpenVPN credentials are not the same as your TigerVPN account credentials.

For Mullvad your OpenVPN credentials are your account code as your username, and m as the password.

For ProtonVPN you can view your OpenVPN credentials online on your account dashboard. The OpenVPN credentials are not the same as your ProtonVPN account credentials.

TCP support and custom ports

By default vopono uses the UDP configuration of the VPN providers.

You can use the TCP configurations by running vopono sync and choosing that option from the provider configuration.

For Mullvad, valid ports are: 1300, 1301, 1302, 1194, 1195, 1196, 1197, or 53 for UDP, and 80 or 443 for TCP,

For PrivateInternetAccess valid ports are 1198 for UDP and 502 for TCP.

For TigerVPN valid ports are 1194 for UDP or 443 for TCP.

Shadowsocks socks-proxy

Mullvad supports proxying via Shadowsocks, if that configuration is chosen with vopono sync. Note you must use a TCP connection on port 443 in this case.

Respond with Y when asked Connect via a bridge? during the vopono sync configuration for Mullvad OpenVPN to enable this configuration. It is not used by default.

If you are using a custom provider config file, you must run the socks proxy server yourself (i.e. ss-local) if using a socks-proxy.

Custom Providers

If you use another commercial VPN provider, please open a Pull Request here with the necessary configuration and serverlist.

For private VPN connections, you can use a custom provider, by passing the complete configuration file to vopono (i.e. an OpenVPN .ovpn config file or a Wireguard wg-quick .conf file).

$ vopono -v exec --custom ~/custom_wireguard.conf --protocol wireguard "firefox"

$ vopono -v exec --custom ./custom_openvpn.ovpn --protocol openvpn "firefox"

Note that in the OpenVPN case the vopono will execute OpenVPN from the same directory as the config file itself. So any accompanying files (CA certificates, authentication files, etc.) must be in the same directory with the file if using relative paths in the config file.

Firefox

Note if running multiple Firefox sessions, they need to run separate profiles in order to force Firefox to run them as separate processes.

Trying to run Firefox normally when there is already an instance running will result in a silent error.

You should also disable DNS over HTTPS as this will send all DNS requests to Cloudflare by default. Firefox Options > General > Network settings > Settings, then deselect Enable DNS over HTTPS.

You may also wish to disable WebRTC - see Mullvad's guide for more details.

Similar issues apply to Chromium and Google Chrome.

Daemons and servers

If running servers and daemons inside of vopono, you can you use the -f $PORT argument to allow incoming connections to a TCP port inside the namespace, by default this port will also be proxied to your host machine at the same port number. Note for same daemons you may need to use the -k keep-alive option in case the process ID changes (you will then need to manually kill the daemon after finishing).

For example, to launch transmission-daemon that is externally accessible at 127.0.0.1:9091 (with outward connections via AzireVPN with Wireguard and a VPN server in Norway):

$ vopono -v exec -k -f 9091 --provider azirevpn --server norway "transmission-daemon -a *.*.*.*"

Note in the case of transmission-daemon the -a *.*.*.* argument is required to allow external connections to the daemon's web portal (your host machine will now count as external to the network namespace).

When finished with vopono, you must manually kill the transmission-daemon since the PID changes (i.e. use killall).

By default, vopono runs a small TCP proxy to proxy the ports on your host machine to the ports on the network namespace - if you do not want this to run use the --no-proxy flag.

Privoxy

A popular use case is to run a proxy server like Privoxy inside the namespace with vopono, and then just configure Firefox, etc. to use that (so it connects via the VPN). This saves having to use Docker or LXC, etc. to do this otherwise.

Here is an example using AzireVPN and Wireguard (where the privoxy user was already created in the normal installation process):

$ vopono -v exec --provider azirevpn -k -u root -f 8118 --server norway  "privoxy --chroot --user privoxy /etc/privoxy/config"

Note we need to specify -u root so that privoxy has the permissions to chroot later.

Port 8118 is then forwarded to the local host, so you can use the proxy server normal. Note that just like with the transmission-daemon example above, Privoxy must be configured to allow remote connections, specifically in the config file you must not specify an IP address in the listen-address:

listen-address :8118

Note that since the daemon forks to a new PID and does not set the parent PID, you must use the -k option to keep vopono alive and then manually kill Privoxy when finished with sudo killall privoxy.

If you have a better solution for handling the PIDs of daemons please create an issue / Pull Request!

Listing running namespaces and applications

The vopono list command lists running applications and namespaces, as a tab separated table:

$ vopono list namespaces
namespace       provider        protocol        num_applications        uptime
vopono_tig_us_losangeles        TigerVpn        OpenVpn 2       28s

$ vopono list applications
namespace       provider        protocol        application     uptime
vopono_tig_us_losangeles        TigerVpn        OpenVpn firefox 36s
vopono_tig_us_losangeles        TigerVpn        OpenVpn lynx    15s

Listing possible servers

The --server argument is actually a prefix, and you can see all possibilities for a given prefix and provider with:

$ vopono servers mullvad --prefix usa
provider        protocol        config_file
Mullvad openvpn usa-us.ovpn
Mullvad wireguard       usa-us40.conf
Mullvad wireguard       usa-us145.conf
Mullvad wireguard       usa-us52.conf
...

VPN Provider specific details

Mullvad users can use mullvad.net/en/check to check the security of their browser's connection. This was used with the Mullvad configuration to verify that there is no DNS leaking or BitTorrent leaking for both the OpenVPN and Wireguard configurations.

AzireVPN users can use their security check page for the same (note the instructions on disabling WebRTC). I noticed that when using IPv6 with OpenVPN it incorrectly states you are not connected via AzireVPN though (Wireguard works correctly).

VPN Provider limitations

MozillaVPN

There is no easy way to delete MozillaVPN devices (Wireguard keypairs), unlike Mullvad this cannot be done on the webpage. I recommend using MozWire to manage this.

iVPN

iVPN Wireguard keypairs must be uploaded manually, as the Client Area is behind a captcha login.

Tunnel Port Forwarding

Some providers allow port forwarding inside the tunnel, so you can open some ports inside the network namespace which can be accessed via the Wireguard/OpenVPN tunnel (this can be important for BitTorrent connectivity, etc.).

Mullvad tunnel port forwarding works for both Wireguard and OpenVPN. You will need to enable the ports in your Mullvad account. Remember to open the port with the -o PORTNUMBER argument to vopono exec if you have the killswitch enabled!

For iVPN port forwarding also works the same way, however it is only supported for OpenVPN on iVPN's side. So remember to pass --protocol openvpn -o PORTNUMBER when trying it! Enable port forwarding in the Port Forwarding page in the iVPN client area.

Dependencies

At the moment, either iptables or nftables is required (the firewall choice can be chosen with the --firewall argument).

OpenVPN must be installed for using OpenVPN providers, and wireguard-tools must be installed for using Wireguard providers.

shadowsocks-libev must be installed for Shadowsocks support (Mullvad OpenVPN bridges).

Troubleshooting

If you have any issues please create a Github issue with details of the problem.

If the issue is networking related, please include the output of the following commands. On the host machine:

ip addr
ip link
ping 10.200.1.2
sudo nft list tables
sudo nft list table nat
sudo iptables -t nat -L

And on the network namespace, replacing vopono_* with your specific generated namespace name e.g. vopono_azire_norway:

sudo ip netns exec vopono_* ip addr
sudo ip netns exec vopono_* ip link
sudo ip netns exec vopono_* nft list tables
sudo ip netns exec vopono_* nft list table vopono_*
sudo ip netns exec vopono_* iptables -L
sudo ip netns exec ping 10.200.1.1
sudo ip netns exec ping 8.8.8.8

See issues #40, #24, #2, and #1 for previous troubleshooting of issues.