VPN Setup

Install OpenVPN

Install OpenVPN and unzip

• sudo apt-get install openvpn unzip -y

Configure OpenVPN

• Using PIA
• Using NordVPN

Test that the VPN is working

Start the vpn:

• sudo openvpn --config /etc/openvpn/Sweden.ovpn --auth-user-pass /etc/openvpn/login.txt

Check it (in a second terminal):

• ip a

You should see at least 3 interfaces listed. One will be tun0.

It should look much like this:

3: tun0: <POINTOPOINT,MULTICAST,NOARP,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state UNKNOWN group default qlen 500
    link/none 
    inet 10.4.112.57/24 scope global tun0
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 fe80::91f3:b087:4ce6:738e/64 scope link stable-privacy 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever

Verify that your public IP address is different from what your ISP thinks it is:

• wget http://ipinfo.io/ip -qO -

You can check by running the same command or browsing to whatsmyip.org from another machine on your network.

To verify that you're appearing as being in the country you've set your VPN to

• whois `wget http://ipinfo.io/ip -qO -`

(Tho, you may need to sudo apt install whois</code first...)

The resulting wall-o-text will include details about where the internet thinks you are.

Autoconnect OpenVPN

• Using PIA
• Using NordVPN

Changing the exit point of your VPN

• Edit /etc/init.d/openvpnauto
  • Change the DAEMON_OPTS line
• sudo systemctl daemon-reload
• sudo service openvpnauto restart

Fix DNS issues by using the Google DNS servers

• echo "nameserver 8.8.8.8" | sudo tee -a /etc/resolv.conf
• echo "nameserver 8.8.4.4" | sudo tee -a /etc/resolv.conf

Make the DNS changes permanent. This sets the resolv.conf file to immutable (i.e. unchangeable)

• sudo chattr +i /etc/resolv.conf

Note: PIA seems to occasionally forget to act like a VPN

When this happens, you may just want to know about it & remind them by restarting OpenVPN

Finding out if you're still protected:

Compare your public IP to that of the rest of the network

wget http://ipinfo.io/ip -qO -

&

ssh user@othermachine 'wget http://ipinfo.io/ip -qO -'

or even better

sshpass -p "Password" ssh user@othermachine 'wget http://ipinfo.io/ip -qO -'

or even betterer, use public key authentication

(some discussion on stack overflow)

Now figure out how to compare these results...

Here's a nifty little shell script...

#!/bin/bash

if nc -zw1 google.com 443
then
  echo "We have Internets..."
else
  echo "NOPE!  No Internets..."
  exit
fi

Local=$(wget http://ipinfo.io/ip -qO -)
Remote=$(sshpass -p 'PASSWORD' ssh USER@OTHERLOCALSERVER wget http://ipinfo.io/ip -qO -)

echo Local: $Local
echo Remote: $Remote

if [ $Local != $Remote ]
then
  echo "PIA is currently behaving"
  echo $(date) " - PIA is Just Fine!" >> vpnfix.log
  mosquitto_pub -h automation -t "Scotts Speaker" -m "P I A is OK"
 else
  echo "PIA is mis-behaving"
  date >> vpnfix.log
  echo $(date) " - PIA is Buggered!" >> vpnfix.log
  mosquitto_pub -h automation -t "Scotts Speaker" -m "P I A is Fucked"

  echo "Attempting repair..."
  service openvpnauto restart
fi

Not only does it check if PIA is doing its thing, it announces the result verbally (the mosquitto... lines) and restarts openvpn (asking for a password for sudo...).  It could use a bit of improvement, but it works.

NOTE:  You have to ssh into OTHERLOCALSERVER manually first so the machine knows it's ok.

NOTE:  Ya kinda need to install mosquitto-clients and sshpass or it aint gonna work quite right...

Ideas for improvement

• Figure out how to use the Internet connectivity check to avoid trying to announce failure & attempt repair if PIA failed because the Internet is missing.
• Find a way to safely allow it to restart the service without asking for a password.
• Then, make it run periodically from cron.