Linux: AirVPN Suite 1.0.0 released

[Staff 9973]

@grammarye

Hello!

Please try with WantedBy= and combine udev and systemd, as detailed here:
https://superuser.com/questions/851846/how-to-write-a-systemd-service-that-depends-on-a-device-being-present

A much simpler solution, worth a test, is reported here:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/360214/systemd-service-run-when-network-interface-up-down-eth0


Kind regards
 

[dL4l7dY6 3]

On 2/6/2021 at 10:13 AM, Staff said:

A source of Bluetit instability in OSMC and Raspbian 32 bit has been detected, and it's libcurl . The linked library explodes now and then. The problem has been resolved with specific libcurl linking. Development is now focused on a new Network Lock approach, to make the whole environment more secure especially during a system bootstrap. Once it is implemented (a matter of just a few days) we will be ready for testing and soon after a new release will follow, perfectly compatible with OSMC too.

Kind regards
 

Hi,

Any word on the new version?

D

[Staff 9973]

5 minutes ago, dL4l7dY6 said:

Hi,

Any word on the new version?

D

Hello!

We are almost ready to publish a public beta version, it's a matter of days.

Kind regards
 

[tOjO 1]

Hi,

I installed the AirVPN suite on Raspbian 10 according to the manual.
I enabled the bluetit.service to start at boot. When i reboot the device the service gives the following status :
* bluetit.service - AirVPN Bluetit Daemon
Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/bluetit.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
Active: active (running) since Wed 2021-02-17 10:36:28 CET; 11min ago
Process: 475 ExecStart=/sbin/bluetit (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
Main PID: 522 (bluetit)
Tasks: 2 (limit: 4915)
CGroup: /system.slice/bluetit.service
`-522 /sbin/bluetit

Feb 17 10:36:28 rPi4 bluetit[522]: Bluetit successfully initialized and ready
Feb 17 10:36:28 rPi4 bluetit[522]: Starting AirVPN boot connection
Feb 17 10:36:28 rPi4 bluetit[522]: AirVPN Manifest updater thread started
Feb 17 10:36:28 rPi4 bluetit[522]: AirVPN Manifest update interval is 15 minutes
Feb 17 10:36:28 rPi4 bluetit[522]: Updating AirVPN Manifest
Feb 17 10:36:28 rPi4 bluetit[522]: Waiting for a valid AirVPN Manifest to be available
Feb 17 10:36:28 rPi4 bluetit[522]: AirVPN Manifest successfully retrieved from server
Feb 17 10:36:29 rPi4 bluetit[522]: Logging in AirVPN user tOjO
Feb 17 10:36:29 rPi4 bluetit[522]: AirVPN login error: Login error
Feb 17 10:36:29 rPi4 bluetit[522]: ERROR: AirVPN login failed for user tOjO

If I restart the bluetit.service manually it works without modifying bluetit.rc ...

Any insights ? 🙂


Kind regards,
Tom



>> EDIT
Found the solution. I modified raspi-config to wait for network at boot... 🙈

Edited ... by tOjO

[Staff 9973]

@tOjO

Hello!

We're glad to know that the problem is resolved. However, can you please send us Bluetit log taken just after the problem has occurred (login failure at bootstrap)? We can't understand how Bluetit could download the "manifest file" (according to the log) if you had no connectivity. In such a case Bluetit should read the last available "manifest" file from the local storage, and print the fact on the log.
 

sudo journalctl | grep bluetit

Thank you in advance.

Kind regards
 

[tOjO 1]

There is something odd about the bluetit-deamon.
Although I haven't configured a whitelist (or blacklist) of VPN servers it connects every time to the same VPN-server ( 159.148.186.27, Riga)... This one is for sure not the most "performant" server. A manual restart of the service does not help.


This is the output of the command :

pi@rPi4:~ $ sudo journalctl | grep bluetit
Feb 18 10:07:58 rPi4 bluetit[446]: Starting Bluetit - AirVPN OpenVPN 3 Service 1.0.0 - 7 January 2021
Feb 18 10:07:58 rPi4 bluetit[446]: OpenVPN core 3.6.6 AirVPN linux arm 32-bit
Feb 18 10:07:58 rPi4 bluetit[446]: Copyright (C) 2012-2020 OpenVPN Inc. All rights reserved.
Feb 18 10:07:58 rPi4 bluetit[545]: Bluetit daemon started with PID 545
Feb 18 10:07:58 rPi4 bluetit[545]: Successfully connected to D-Bus
Feb 18 10:07:58 rPi4 bluetit[545]: Reading run control directives from file /etc/airvpn/bluetit.rc
Feb 18 10:07:58 rPi4 bluetit[545]: IPv6 is not available in this system
Feb 18 10:07:58 rPi4 bluetit[545]: Bluetit successfully initialized and ready
Feb 18 10:07:58 rPi4 bluetit[545]: Starting AirVPN boot connection
Feb 18 10:07:58 rPi4 bluetit[545]: AirVPN Manifest updater thread started
Feb 18 10:07:58 rPi4 bluetit[545]: AirVPN Manifest update interval is 15 minutes
Feb 18 10:07:58 rPi4 bluetit[545]: Updating AirVPN Manifest
Feb 18 10:07:58 rPi4 bluetit[545]: Waiting for a valid AirVPN Manifest to be available
Feb 18 10:07:58 rPi4 bluetit[545]: AirVPN Manifest successfully retrieved from server
Feb 18 10:07:59 rPi4 bluetit[545]: Logging in AirVPN user tOjO
Feb 18 10:07:59 rPi4 bluetit[545]: AirVPN login error: Login error
Feb 18 10:07:59 rPi4 bluetit[545]: ERROR: AirVPN login failed for user tOjO
Feb 18 10:09:29 rPi4 sudo[1146]:       pi : TTY=pts/0 ; PWD=/home/pi ; USER=root ; COMMAND=/usr/bin/systemctl status bluetit

[Staff 9973]

@tOjO

Hello and thank you!

We have an explanation for the reported problem which you resolved by modifying raspi-config to wait for network at bootstrap. If raspi-config is not configured to wait for the network to be up, it forces systemd network-online service not to wait for it. Therefore, the target for systemd is reached (systemd assumes that network is up) and Bluetit is launched, but in reality the network is not yet up. Your solution (which, we notice, must be applied to OSMC too) is correct and probably the cleanest one. Then Bluetit probably retrieves the "manifest" file from the local storage as it must do when it can't reach bootstrap servers and a local copy of the "manifest" file is available,. The claim that the manifest is downloaded remotely is just a logging glitch: this issue is still under investigation by the way.
 

Quote

Although I haven't configured a whitelist (or blacklist) of VPN servers it connects every time to the same VPN-server ( 159.148.186.27, Riga)... This one is for sure not the most "performant" server. A manual restart of the service does not help.
 

What server selection type (quick - server pool - country - continent) do you enforce? Also feel free to send us your bluetit.rc file (wipe out sensitive data first).

Kind regards
AirVPN Support Team
 

[tOjO 1]

Below is the content of bluetit.rc file.
If left the bootstrap-servers and RSA parameters untouched.
 

#
# bluetit runcontrol file
#

# AirVPN bootstrap servers

bootserver                  http://63.33.78.166
bootserver                  http://52.48.66.85
bootserver                  http://54.93.175.114
bootserver                  http://63.33.116.50

# RSA Parameters

rsaexponent                 AQAB
rsamodulus                  wuQXz7eZeEBwaaRsVK8iEHpueXoKyQzW8sr8qMUkZIcKtKv5iseXMrTbcGYGpRXdiqXp7FqrSjPSMDuRGaHfjWgjbnW4PwecmgJSfhkWt4xY8OnIwKkuI2Eo0MAa9lduPOQRKSfa9I1PBogIyEUrf7kSjc$

airconnectonboot            quick
airusername                 tOjO
airpassword                 ****************

 

[Staff 9973]

@tOjO

Thank you very much.

Can you please open a ticket? Since we do not have a rational explanation on how the quick connection ends up to Latvia, we would need to know which country you connect from (and optionally which country ipleak.net detects you're in). Does bluetit.rc have any "country" directive?

Kind regards
 

[tOjO 1]

No there is no country directive defined...
 

[dL4l7dY6 3]

On 2/16/2021 at 1:32 PM, Staff said:

Hello!

We are almost ready to publish a public beta version, it's a matter of days.

Kind regards
 

Hi Guys,

Any further updates? Need a beta tester?

Thanks

D

[frpergflf 8]

On 2/18/2021 at 6:49 AM, Staff said:

@tOjO

Thank you very much.

Can you please open a ticket? Since we do not have a rational explanation on how the quick connection ends up to Latvia, we would need to know which country you connect from (and optionally which country ipleak.net detects you're in). Does bluetit.rc have any "country" directive?

Kind regards
 

I noticed the same thing, I was connecting to a server in either Latvia or Sweden.

I updated "country" in /etc/airvpn/bluetit.rc to my Country and I started connecting to a server in a nearby Country.

I am on CentOS and I suspect either systemd or firewalld or selinux is stopping "something" from identifying my location.

I went looking because I noticed a message from goldcrest stating something like "could not identify location".  I do not remember the exact message.

After the change, all is well.
 

[mith_y2k 6]

I recently installed the AirVPN Suite on a Raspberry Pi. The basic configuration worked out easily and even the automatic connection at boot seems to work well. I did notice an issue twice now and I am a bit lost on how to resolve it. Two different scenarios happened in the last few days, but same outcome: in the first occurrence I lost internet connection (restarted my router, so internet went down for a few minutes), in the second occurrence I was playing with the bluetit.rc and restarted the service a few times using systemctl; in both occasions I eventually wasn't able to access the internet at all (local network kept working). in the logs I see the following errors:

 

Mar 15 16:18:00 raspberrypi bluetit[1362]: ERROR: Cannot start AirVPN Connection. AirVPN Manifest not available.
Mar 15 16:18:40 raspberrypi bluetit[1362]: AirVPN Manifest successfully retrieved from server

In both cases a simple restart fixed it. It looks like the client cannot retrieve the manifests anymore because I lost connectivity to the internet or maybe it's a simple DNS issue since when the client is active all DNS requests go to the Airvpn server instead of my local one. Any tips?

A related feedback, as I was reading the documentation at https://gitlab.com/AirVPN/AirVPN-Suite#goldcrest-client I found it very thorough and detailed, but I would suggest a few changes:
1. It would be great to have a few sample configurations, i.e. one that connect to a county list or specific server
2. some of the explanations of the parameters aren't fully clear, for example it looks like if I set the airconnectboot parameter to "quick" I cannot specify the airproto
3. it's unclear to me how the bluetit service behaves if I start playing with goldcrest; more specifically when I look at https://gitlab.com/AirVPN/AirVPN-Suite#automatic-connection-at-boot-or-startup-time I'm confused if you are talking about Bluetit or Goldcrest

Thank you