Configure WireGuard VPN
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Configure WireGuard VPN Organic Design procedure |
Contents
Install OpenVPN
OpenVPN is a full-featured SSL VPN solution which can accomodate a wide range of configurations, including remote access, site-to-site VPNs, WiFi security, and enterprise-scale remote access solutions with load balancing, failover, and fine-grained access-controls. OpenVPN is a single program that is run on both the server hosting the share, and on the clients which will be accessing it. First install it on the server an Linux clients.
Create the TUN/TAP device
A TAP device is a virtual ethernet adapter, while a TUN device is a virtual point-to-point IP link. Most Linux systems will have these devices set up by default, but some VPS hosts such as VPSLink do not (see the issue raised in their forum and the solution added to their wiki for more detail about this). If /dev/net/tun exists then you already have TUN/TAP set up and can move on to the OpenVPN configuration, otherwise do the following to create a TUN device.
Server configuration
We'll go for a configuration which is as close to the default server.conf example file as possible to simplify the procedure. The certificate files must be specified with full pathnames, and the protocol must be changed to TCP rather than UDP which is the default. Here's all the required settings with comments removed for brevity.
Creating Keys
There's a utility called easy-rsa in /usr/share/doc/openvpn/examples/easy-rsa which should be copied to another location (we use /etc/openvpn/easy-rsa. The default values for all certificates generated can be updated in the vars file. First, configure easy-rsa with the following shell commands:
cp -pR /usr/share/doc/openvpn/examples/easy-rsa /etc cd /etc/easy-rsa mkdir keys . ./vars ./clean-all
Next we'll user easy-rsa to generate a master key, a server key and a couple of client keys (it's more secure for the client keys to be created locally, but we'll get that procedure sorted out another day!). Each of the commands requires a number of questions to be answered which can all be left as their defaults (which were set up in the vars file above), except for the common name setting which we'll set to "organicdesign-ca" for the master key, "server" for the server key, and the client name for all the client keys (e.g. "nad-laptop" or "zenia-office" for this example).
./build-ca ./build-key-server server ./build-key nad-laptop ./build-key zenia-office
Then after all the keys are made we must build the Diffie Hellman key exchange parameters.
./build-dh
All the generated key files are in the easy-rsa/keys. All the files having the .key suffix are secret and should only be communicated over encrypted connections like SCP. The ca.crt file belongs on the server and all the client machines as well. The files that start with a client name belong on that client machine.
Setting up Ubuntu workstations
First install OpenVPN and the configuration GUI using apt-get install openvpn network-manager-openvpn. The GUI adds a "VPN Connections" item to the network menu from the system tray which VPN's can be added, removed and configured from.
Setting up on Windows workstations
On Windows OpenVPN is normally run from the console, which can be a little annoying to have lying on the taskbar all the time. OpenVPN GUI lets you run OpenVPN without this console window. Instead you get an icon in the notification area (the area on the right side of the taskbar) from which you can control OpenVPN to start/stop your VPN tunnels, view the log, change your password and other useful things.
The simplest setup (and the only one covered here) is if your internet connection is through a normal LAN or Wifi adapter and uses DHCP (i.e. "obtain IP address automatically" is ticked).
After OpenVPN has been installed, you'll notice in network settings that an extra LAN connection has been added. First, right-click it and rename it to "OpenVPN". Then select both the original network connection that you connect to the internet through, and the OpenVPN connection, then right-click and select "Bridge connections" which takes a few seconds to complete. After that's done a new icon will appear in the network list called "Network bridge" or something which you can rename to "OpenVPN Bridge". No more settings are required if your original internet connection used DHCP.
Bridging
Ethernet bridging essentially involves combining an ethernet interface with one or more virtual TAP interfaces and bridging them together under the umbrella of a single bridge interface. Ethernet bridges represent the software analog to a physical ethernet switch. The ethernet bridge can be thought of as a kind of software switch which can be used to connect multiple ethernet interfaces (either physical or virtual) on a single machine while sharing a single IP subnet.
By bridging a physical ethernet NIC with an OpenVPN-driven TAP interface at two separate locations, it is possible to logically merge both ethernet networks, as if they were a single ethernet subnet. See the OpenVPN bridging information for more detail.
