Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

AvidHunter · Joined: 09 Feb 2019 Posts: 12

@ OscarTalks

Reconfigured everything for VPNbook and got the same results. Everything connects but no web access, so I went to bed frustrated.

Next Day (today) I took the laptop a few cities south to a location where I had access to a commercial account with the same ISP (Comcast). WAHLA!!! everything works perfectly, Comcast is blocking VPN use from residential accounts. Any suggestions on how to deal with this? I wonder if Comcast blocks a Tor browser?

festus · Joined: 14 Jan 2015 Posts: 235

@OscarTalks

I am using your "Simple VPN Implementation" successfully on upupbb & both 32 & 64 bit xenial-7.5

Is there any way to configure other pkgs, eg: claws-mail, to use this vpn pkg?

Thank you very much, for this important pkg.

bliss,
festus Smile

OscarTalks · Joined: 05 Feb 2012 Posts: 2202 Location: London, England

OscarTalks · Joined: 05 Feb 2012 Posts: 2202 Location: London, England

festus · Joined: 14 Jan 2015 Posts: 235

LeithR · Posted: Wed 20 Feb 2019, 15:23 Post subject:

Thanks all for your efforts on this activity. I eventually got it going this afternoon.
Basically the steps I took to set it up on a new installation of xenialpup64-7.5-UEFI was as follows
Download from the smokey01/OscarTalks web page the openvpn files similarly named to your operating system so I downloaded openvpn-2.4.6-x86_64-xenial.pet and vpn-onoff-0.1-x86_64-xenial.pet.
I loaded both of them onto the machine, checked that I had VPN-Start and VPN-Stop showing in Menu>Network then went to
https://www.vpnbook.com/freevpn

I then downloaded from the Free OpenVPN column the FR Open VPN Certificate Bundle (Depends where in the world you are located so download one adjacent to where you live). Noted the Username and Password.

Then opened the file /etc/vpn-onoff/vpnpass as text and overwrote the words username and password in the file (2nd Tab called vpnpass). Don't forget to save the change.

To note that you are starting a vpn session, firstly run What is my vpn address as per suggestion in OcarTalks first note, take note of it, then start vpn from Menu>Network>VPN-Start then re-open what is my vpn address. The should be quite different thus indicating that you are running in VPN.

Many thanks to OscarTalks for putting this thread together, its been an interesting couple of days figuring it out.

OscarTalks · Joined: 05 Feb 2012 Posts: 2202 Location: London, England

Hello LeithR, glad to know you got it working.

Just a couple of points for yourself and others, the experimental vpn-onoff package does already contain all the needed components, including openvpn, so there is no need to install openvpn as well.

The openvpn packages are intended for people who want to run it from command line or as a dependency of other tools.

The vpn-onoff package also contains a selection of the .ovpn configuration files which allow connection to all the available servers (at the time of writing) of VPNbook and FreeVPN.me although these configuration files have been renamed for simplicity.

Users can (and should) download other configuration files if they want to use a different protocol (UDP or TCP) or a different port number, or in the event that these providers change server details or introduce new servers that you want to use.

As things stand, the vpn-onoff package should work on completion of only one step, which is to grab the VPNbook password and paste it into the second line of /etc/vpn-onoff/vpnpass in place of the word "password".

AvidHunter · Joined: 09 Feb 2019 Posts: 12

@ OscarTalks

My ISP denies any culpability. I've been playing with my modem/router (netgear C6220) and it does not support VPN pass through. Even when I plug another router into the unit so the modem acts as a bridge only I still can't get through it with the VPN. Now begins the search for a new modem.

Anyway I greatly appreciate everything you have provided here, without your efforts I doubt that I would have gotten anywhere near this far. Thank you.

AvidHunter · Joined: 09 Feb 2019 Posts: 12

@ OscarTalks

I've got a new modem/router to install and test...coming soon.

However I have another curiosity question. I really like what you have done here and I have another laptop running Lubuntu. Since the latest version of puppy is based on ubuntu, or at least able to use ubuntu packages, what would it take to package this up so it would install on Lubuntu?

OscarTalks · Joined: 05 Feb 2012 Posts: 2202 Location: London, England

MrDuckGuy · 2019-03-13-GpptpVPNv2.0_output.png

rcrsn51 · Posted: Thu 14 Mar 2019, 11:44 Post subject:

Deleted.

OscarTalks · Joined: 05 Feb 2012 Posts: 2202 Location: London, England

PPTP and OpenVPN are alternative protocols for establishing a VPN connection so you would use either one or the other, therefore you would not use Gpptp in conjunction with my system which uses OpenVPN. I can't advise on Gpptp as I have no experience of it.

My thing is mainly designed to be used with the mentioned free providers. In practice it can be adapted to operate with other providers, but there are no guarantees with this.

You will need to obtain .ovpn config file(s) from Ivacy in order to configure my thing to connect to their servers. I asked them (in their chat applet) and they said they do provide these to their subscribers. You will need to pick out the one which corresponds to the server (location) you want to use. Place it in /etc/vpn-onoff along with the others, delete the vpnconfig symlink and make a new vpnconfig symlink which links to your Ivacy config file. Enter your Ivacy username and password in to the vpnpass file. Then see if it connects.

The URL of the VPN provider is contained within each of the .ovpn config files
There may be some other lines in it that you will need to edit.
The main one will need to read:-
auth-user-pass /etc/vpn-onoff/vpnpass
Without this it will not know where to look for the username and password so is unlikely to work.

Indy · Joined: 01 Feb 2006 Posts: 73 Location: Sydney, Australia

I can confirm that this works with (paid) Private Internet Access (PIA). I have it working on two machines, one running xenialpup32 and the other xenialpup64 and it's working very well on both, rock solid. Thanks, OscarTalks! Razz

Everything worked exactly as per your instructions.

Here's how I did it:

Installed vpn-onoff-0.1-i686-xenial.pet. It creates /etc/vpn-onoff. (installed vpn-onoff-0.1-x86_64-xenial.pet for the 64-bit laptop)
Downloaded the .ovpn config files from the PIA website
Copied all the (.ovpn) files into /etc/vpn-onoff.
Went into /etc/vpn-onoff and recreated a symlink of vpnconfig to my chosen region (e.g. "AU Sydney.ovpn")
Edited the .ovpn file of my chosen region, looked for the line "auth-user-pass" and changed it to "auth-user-pass /etc/vpn-onoff/vpnpass"
Edited /etc/vpn-onoff/vpnpass and entered my PIA username/password

To run, Menu > Network > VPN-Start. (I didn't have to to mess with Gpptp.)

The PIA website (www.privateinternetaccess.com) reflects your IP address and tells you if you're protected by PIA (as in, if you're reaching that web page via their VPN, I suppose). I decided to use that to check my VPN status as a PIA user. So, I edited vpn-start and vpn-stop (both found in /usr/bin) and replaced everywhere I found "http://my-ip-address.co" with "https://www.privateinternetaccess.com". So now, every time I start or stop the VPN, that PIA website pops up for me.

OscarTalks · Joined: 05 Feb 2012 Posts: 2202 Location: London, England

Now testing "vpn-onoff" version 0.2
Added DNS handling using openresolv
Version upgrade of OpenVPN to 2.4.7
Update of freevpn.me configuration files to reflect changes and addition of 1 new server.
See first post.