Gluetun VPN Healthcheck or Connectivity Issues in arr Stack

[Goatmaster 0]

Hey everyone,

I’ve been setting up the *arr stack using the TechHutTV homelab guide and ran into an issue with my gluetun container. Everything is wired through gluetun with a WireGuard config (AirVPN), and the other containers (qBittorrent, NZBGet, Sonarr, Radarr, etc.) all use network_mode: service:gluetun.

Here’s a redacted version of my docker-compose file — only the keys have been removed:

 

services:
  gluetun:
    image: qmcgaw/gluetun
    container_name: gluetun
    cap_add:
      - NET_ADMIN
    devices:
      - /dev/net/tun:/dev/net/tun
    networks:
      servarrnetwork:
        ipv4_address: 172.39.0.2
    ports:
      - 56477:56477
      - 8080:8080
      - 6881:6881
      - 6789:6789
      - 9696:9696
    volumes:
      - ./gluetun:/gluetun
    environment:
      - VPN_SERVICE_PROVIDER=airvpn
      - VPN_TYPE=wireguard
      - FIREWALL_VPN_INPUT_PORTS=56477
      - WIREGUARD_PUBLIC_KEY=<REDACTED>
      - WIREGUARD_PRIVATE_KEY=<REDACTED>
      - WIREGUARD_PRESHARED_KEY=<REDACTED>
      - WIREGUARD_ADDRESSES=10.182.196.127
      - SERVER_COUNTRIES=Germany
      - SERVER_CITIES=Frankfurt
      - HEALTH_VPN_DURATION_INITIAL=120s
    healthcheck:
      test: ping -c 1 www.google.com || exit 1
      interval: 20s
      timeout: 10s
      retries: 5
    restart: unless-stopped
qbittorrent:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/qbittorrent:latest
    container_name: qbittorrent
    restart: unless-stopped
    labels:
      - deunhealth.restart.on.unhealthy=true
    environment:
      - PUID=1000
      - PGID=1000
      - TZ=Europe/Amsterdam
      - WEBUI_PORT=8080 # must match "qbittorrent web interface" port number in gluetun's service above
      - TORRENTING_PORT=56477 # airvpn forwarded port, pulled from .env
    volumes:
      - ./qbittorrent:/config
      - /data:/data
    depends_on:
      gluetun:
        condition: service_healthy
        restart: true
    network_mode: service:gluetun
    healthcheck:
      test: ping -c 1 www.google.com || exit 1
      interval: 60s
      retries: 3
      start_period: 20s
      timeout: 10s

The gluetun container starts, but the healthcheck fails, which means all containers that depend on it (like qBittorrent, Prowlarr, etc.) don’t run properly.

I’ve tested the WireGuard config directly and it works fine. I also tried using different ports and checked AirVPN’s forwarded port list — everything seems to match. Still, the healthcheck won’t go healthy, and the services relying on it won't start as a result.

Anyone experienced similar issues or have ideas to troubleshoot this setup? Is there a better way to configure or verify VPN health inside Gluetun?

Thanks in advance!

Edited ... by Goatmaster

[BlueChikn 0]

You are not alone.  Having the same issues starting today (6/4). 

If you run "docker compose up" without the "-d" you can see some of the logs.  Gluetun is unable to reach github to download some of the lists from the gluetun repos. 

I could not figure out what was going wrong after trying a bunch of different AirVPN servers nothing was working.  However it is working now as of a few minutes ago.  My guess is there was some issue on the AirVPN side.  One other thing I noticed is the "test open" process on the AirVPN website kept returning "No Ports Open" for any port number I attempted.  That has also seemed to have resolved itself by now. 

Hope its working for you now. 

[Goatmaster 0]

Thanks for the reply, good to know I wasn’t the only one running into it. The health check came back for me as well, but right after that I started seeing cloudflare.com.: context deadline exceeded. Looked like DNS over TLS was struggling. I also saw Gluetun hanging when trying to reach GitHub, like you mentioned. I switched a couple of AirVPN servers too without luck, so I think you're right probably something on AirVPN’s end. Everything seems " kinda" stable again now though. Appreciate the heads-up!

[Goatmaster 0]

No issues anymore system is working again.