Linux client setup

Provision client config

After you deploy a server, you can use an included Ansible script to provision Linux clients too! Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, and Fedora are supported. The playbook is deploy_client.yml.

Required variables

client_ip - The IP address of your client machine (You can use localhost in order to deploy locally)
vpn_user - The username. (Ensure that you have valid certificates and keys in the configs/SERVER_ip/pki/ directory)
ssh_user - The username that we need to use in order to connect to the client machine via SSH (ignore if you are deploying locally)
server_ip - The vpn server ip address

Example

ansible-playbook deploy_client.yml -e 'client_ip=client.com vpn_user=jack server_ip=vpn-server.com ssh_user=root'

Additional options

If the user requires sudo password use the following argument: --ask-become-pass.

OS Specific instructions

Some Linux clients may require more specific and details instructions to configure a connection to the deployed Algo VPN, these are documented here.

Fedora Workstation

(Gnome) Network Manager install

We'll use the rsclarke/NetworkManager-strongswan Copr repo (see this comment), this will make the IKE and ESP fields available in the Gnome Network Manager. Note that at time of writing the non-Copr repo will result in connection failures. Also note that the Copr repo instructions are not filled in by author. Author knows what to do. Everybody else should avoid this repo. So unless you are comfortable with using this repo, you'll want to hold out untill the patches applied in the Copr repo make it into stable.

First remove the stable NetworkManager-strongswan package, ensure you have backups in place and / or take note of config backups taken during the removal of the package.

dnf remove NetworkManager-strongswan

Next, enable the Copr repo and install it along with the NetworkManager-strongswan-gnome package:

dnf copr enable -y rsclarke/NetworkManager-strongswan
dnf install NetworkManager-strongswan NetworkManager-strongswan-gnome

Reboot your machine:

reboot now

(Gnome) Network Manager configuration

In this example we'll assume the IP of our Algo VPN server is 1.2.3.4 and the user we created is user-name.

Go to Settings > Network
Add a new Network (+ bottom left of the window)
Select IPsec/IKEv2 (strongswan)
Fill out the options:
- Name: your choice, e.g.: ikev2-1.2.3.4
- Gateway:
  - Address: IP of the Algo VPN server, e.g: 1.2.3.4
  - Certificate: cacert.pem found at /path/to/algo/configs/1.2.3.4/cacert.pem
- Client:
  - Authentication: Certificate/Private key
  - Certificate: user-name.crt found at /path/to/algo/configs/1.2.3.4/pki/certs/user-name.crt
  - Private key: user-name.key found at /path/to/algo/configs/1.2.3.4/pki/private/user-name.key
- Options:
  - Check Request an inner IP address, connection will fail without this option
  - Optionally check Enforce UDP encapsulation
  - Optionally check Use IP compression
  - For the later 2 options, hover to option in the settings to see a description
- Cipher proposal:
  - Check Enable custom proposals
  - IKE: aes256gcm16-prfsha512-ecp384,aes256-sha2_512-prfsha512-ecp384,aes256-sha2_384-prfsha384-ecp384
  - ESP: aes256gcm16-ecp384,aes256-sha2_512-prfsha512-ecp384
Apply and turn the connection on, you should now be connected

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