Staff

Hello! We're very glad to inform you that AirVPN Suite version 2.2.0 is now available for x86-64 and ARM based Linux systems. This is a maintenance and security hardening release focused on the traffic split infrastructure. The 2.2.0 Suite includes: Bluetit: lightweight, ultra-fast D-Bus controlled system daemon providing full connectivity and integration to AirVPN servers, or generic OpenVPN and WireGuard servers. Bluetit can also enforce Network Lock and/or connect the system to AirVPN during the system bootstrap Goldcrest: Bluetit client, allowing full integration with AirVPN servers, users, keys, profiles as well as generic OpenVPN and WireGuard servers Hummingbird: lightweight and standalone binary for generic OpenVPN and WireGuard server connections Cuckoo: traffic split manager, granting full access and functionality to AirVPN's traffic split infrastructure airsu: a "run and forget" tool to automatically set and enable the user environment for the X.Org or Wayland based ecosystem without any user input WHAT'S NEW NEW: Cuckoo security hardening: namespace directories are now opened with additional ownership and permission checks NEW: once root privileges have been dropped, Cuckoo can no longer regain them (no_new_privs is now set) NEW: traffic split namespace names are now validated by both Bluetit (trafficsplitnamespace run control directive) and Cuckoo, and are limited to 32 characters WireGuard and network namespace runtime directories now use /run/wireguard and /run/netns (legacy /var paths removed) improved POSIX compliance of the installation script Please note: if you have set a custom trafficsplitnamespace longer than 32 characters, you need to shorten it before upgrading. AirVPN Suite 2.2.0 is free and open source software released under GPLv3. Source code is available on GitLab: https://gitlab.com/AirVPN/AirVPN-Suite AirVPN Suite 2.2.0 is available for x86-64, AArch64 (ARM 64 bit) and armv7l (ARM 32 bit) architectures. Legacy versions are also available. https://airvpn.org/linux/suite/ AirVPN Suite resources, links and forum: https://airvpn.org/forums/topic/79336-airvpn-suite-resources/ Kind regards & datalove AirVPN Staff

Hello! The problem seems completely resolved. Kind regards

@gtrman Hello! Thank you for the detailed list of checks. The error comes from a security check in Eddie, not from netsh.exe itself. Eddie runs netsh.exe and other Windows tools with administrator privileges, so before running them it verifies that neither the executable nor its folder can be modified by an account other than SYSTEM, Administrators or TrustedInstaller. Otherwise a non-administrator could replace the tool and have it run with elevated privileges. The empty text after "not allowed:" in your screenshot indicates that netsh.exe itself passed the check, but its folder, C:\Windows\System32, did not: some other account is allowed to create files in it. This is not the default Windows configuration. It is usually left behind by a "take ownership" or "grant full access" tweak or tool applied to system folders in the past. This also explains why sfc, DISM and reinstalling Eddie, portable or installer, did not help: they do not reset the permissions of the System32 folder. To confirm, please open a Command Prompt and run the following command. It only displays the permissions and does not change anything: icacls "%SystemRoot%\System32" Then post the output here. If you prefer, you can replace your computer name and user name with placeholders, but please leave the rest unchanged. On a default installation only NT SERVICE\TrustedInstaller, NT AUTHORITY\SYSTEM and BUILTIN\Administrators can write to that folder. An additional entry with (F), (M), (W) or (WD) for your user account, Users, Authenticated Users or Everyone is the likely cause. Please do not take ownership of System32 or change its permissions recursively in the meantime. Once we see the output, we will tell you how to remove only the extra entry. Kind regards

@0range Hello! The option you used on LineageOS is a LineageOS addition, not a feature of stock Android. On stock Android, and on systems based on it such as HyperOS, a VPN app works through the Android VpnService API, which applies the VPN only to traffic generated by apps running on the phone itself. Traffic coming from tethered devices (Wi-Fi hotspot, USB or Bluetooth) is forwarded by the system directly to the mobile data connection and never enters the VPN interface. Changing that routing requires root, so no VPN app can do it on a non-rooted phone. We are not aware of an equivalent setting in HyperOS. Please note that this means that, while the VPN is connected on the phone, the devices connected to its hotspot are NOT protected: their traffic goes out with the IP address of your mobile operator. Possible solutions without root: 1. Run AirVPN on each device. Eddie is available for Windows, macOS, Linux and Android, and you can also use OpenVPN or WireGuard configuration files generated by our Config Generator. Connect the devices to the phone hotspot as usual, then connect each of them to AirVPN. Your account allows up to 5 simultaneous connections. This is the recommended solution, because every device gets full protection. 2. Use a travel router with a VPN client (for example an OpenWrt based router running WireGuard) connected to the phone through Wi-Fi or USB tethering, and connect your devices to the router. All the devices behind the router then share a single VPN connection. Kind regards

Hello! With Bluetit's network lock active, this cannot work, but there is a different approach that is well worth trying. Why the pods become unreachable: Bluetit's network lock is a kill switch for the whole host. It sets the default policy of the FORWARD chain to drop and only accepts forwarded traffic coming from the VPN tunnel. Pods that don't use hostNetwork are reached through forwarding (LAN or ingress, then NAT to the pod address on the cni0/flannel interfaces), so their traffic is dropped, while hostNetwork pods use the host's own input/output path and keep working. The "allow private network" exception only covers input and output on the host, not forwarding, and when the lock is applied Bluetit replaces the whole firewall ruleset, k3s rules included. There is no Bluetit option to exempt container interfaces or forwarded traffic. The better approach is to turn it around: leave the host and k3s outside the VPN, and put only Firefox and BiglyBT inside it, in a dedicated network namespace whose only way out is a WireGuard interface. If the tunnel goes down, the applications in the namespace simply have no network, so you get a kill switch by design without touching the host firewall, and k3s, the Cloudflare tunnel and your LAN are not affected at all. Please note that this is a suggestion we believe is worth a try, but we have not tested it on a setup like yours, so treat it as a starting point and let us know what happens. 1. Generate a WireGuard configuration file with our Configuration Generator (Client Area > Config Generator, Linux, WireGuard, one specific server) and save it, for example, as /etc/wireguard/airvpn.conf. Take note of the Address, DNS and MTU lines in its [Interface] section. Stop Bluetit or at least disable its network lock. 2. Create the namespace and the tunnel, as root and in bash (the wg setconf line uses a bash feature that plain sh does not support). The WireGuard interface is created and configured in the main namespace, so its encrypted UDP traffic leaves through your normal connection, and then it is moved into the namespace: ip netns add vpn ip -n vpn link set lo up ip link add wg0 type wireguard wg setconf wg0 <(wg-quick strip /etc/wireguard/airvpn.conf) ip link set wg0 netns vpn ip -n vpn addr add <IPv4 Address from the file> dev wg0 ip -n vpn addr add <IPv6 Address from the file> dev wg0 ip -n vpn link set wg0 mtu <MTU from the file> up ip -n vpn route add default dev wg0 ip -n vpn -6 route add default dev wg0 mkdir -p /etc/netns/vpn echo "nameserver 10.128.0.1" > /etc/netns/vpn/resolv.conf Use the Address and DNS values from your own file if they differ. "ip netns exec" mounts /etc/netns/vpn/resolv.conf in place of /etc/resolv.conf, so programs in the namespace use our DNS through the tunnel. Please also check that the "hosts:" line in /etc/nsswitch.conf does not contain "resolve": that module asks systemd-resolved on the host directly and would bypass the namespace resolver. 3. Check that it works: ip netns exec vpn wg show ip netns exec vpn curl https://ipleak.net/json/ wg show should report a recent handshake and curl should show the AirVPN exit address. 4. Start the applications inside the namespace, as your normal user: sudo ip netns exec vpn sudo -u $USER env DISPLAY=$DISPLAY XAUTHORITY=$XAUTHORITY WAYLAND_DISPLAY=$WAYLAND_DISPLAY XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=$XDG_RUNTIME_DIR firefox --no-remote -P vpn --no-remote and a separate profile (create "vpn" once with firefox -P) are important: otherwise, if Firefox is already running outside the namespace, the command just opens a new window of the existing instance, outside the VPN. The snap version of Firefox shipped with Ubuntu may not like being started this way; if it fails, the Mozilla .deb or tarball build should behave better. BiglyBT can be started the same way. If you use port forwarding, set the forwarded port from your Client Area as BiglyBT's incoming port: it reaches the namespace through the tunnel. To remove everything: ip netns del vpn (wg0 is deleted with it). The commands in step 2 can later go into a small script or systemd unit to run at boot. As an alternative for BiglyBT only, since you already run k3s: you can run it as a pod together with a VPN sidecar container such as Gluetun configured for AirVPN WireGuard, so that the pod can only reach the Internet through the tunnel. Firefox would still need the namespace approach above. Please let us know how it goes, especially if something in the steps above needs adjusting on your system. Kind regards

@183aTr78f9o Hello! Thank you for the very detailed report, and sorry for the long wait. Your analysis was right: the problem is that Bluetit assumes a standard filesystem layout (FHS), which NixOS doesn't provide. We checked the Suite source code and there are two specific causes: 1. Bluetit does not use PATH to find external tools (systemctl, nft, iptables, ip...). It only looks in a fixed list of directories: /bin, /usr/bin, /sbin, /usr/sbin, /usr/local/bin and /usr/local/sbin. That's why Environment=PATH=... had no effect and why your symlinks in /bin worked. 2. Before loading the WireGuard module, Bluetit requires /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/modules.builtin to exist, and it fails if the file is missing, even when the module is already loaded. On NixOS the modules live in /run/booted-system/kernel-modules/lib/modules, so you get "system 'modules.builtin' does not exist" and "cannot load wireguard system module". Until these assumptions are relaxed upstream (but for point 1, probably they will not be implemented for security reasons), you can work around both of them declaratively, without manual symlinks in /bin. Below is a reworked version of your module (Suite 2.1.0, x86_64). Please note that this reworked version has been generated through an LLM, verified by human, but we have not been able to test it in depth on a NixOS machine, so please treat it as a starting point: { config, lib, pkgs, ... }: let version = "2.1.0"; suite = pkgs.stdenv.mkDerivation { pname = "airvpn-suite"; inherit version; src = pkgs.fetchurl { url = "https://eddie.website/repository/AirVPN-Suite/${version}/AirVPN-Suite-x86_64-${version}.tar.gz"; hash = lib.fakeHash; # replace with the hash reported by the first build }; nativeBuildInputs = [ pkgs.autoPatchelfHook ]; # no need for nix-ld buildInputs = with pkgs; [ dbus openssl stdenv.cc.cc.lib zlib xz zstd ]; installPhase = '' install -Dm0755 bin/bluetit $out/sbin/bluetit for f in goldcrest hummingbird airsu; do install -Dm0755 bin/$f $out/bin/$f; done install -Dm0644 -t $out/share/airvpn etc/airvpn/* install -Dm0644 -t $out/share/dbus-1/system.d etc/dbus-1/system.d/* install -Dm0644 -t $out/share/zsh/site-functions etc/site-functions/* ''; }; # tools Bluetit looks up in the fixed directories tools = [ "systemctl" "resolvectl" "ip" "nft" "iptables" "iptables-save" "iptables-restore" "ip6tables" "ip6tables-save" "ip6tables-restore" ]; in { environment.systemPackages = [ suite ] ++ (with pkgs; [ nftables iptables iproute2 ]); users.groups.airvpn = { }; services.dbus.packages = [ suite ]; # replaces your activation script boot.kernelModules = [ "wireguard" ]; systemd.tmpfiles.rules = [ "d /lib 0755 root root -" "d /usr/local/sbin 0755 root root -" "L+ /lib/modules - - - - /run/booted-system/kernel-modules/lib/modules" ] ++ map (b: "L+ /usr/local/sbin/${b} - - - - /run/current-system/sw/bin/${b}") tools; # Keep your environment.etc entries for /etc/airvpn, using # source = "${suite}/share/airvpn/<file>" and mode = "0600". # Keep your systemd.services definitions, but drop the Environment=PATH line. } A few notes: The symlinks go into /usr/local/sbin, which Bluetit searches and NixOS does not manage, and systemd-tmpfiles recreates them at every boot, always pointing to the current generation. Remove the manual ones you created in /bin. /lib/modules points to the booted system, so it always matches the running kernel (uname -r), including after a kernel update until you reboot. autoPatchelfHook links the binaries against Nix store libraries at build time, so nix-ld is no longer needed for the Suite. Please use nftables for the network lock (networklock nftables, or networklockpersist nftables in bluetit.rc). Your log shows that the nftables lock initialized correctly, while the iptables restore failed. If Bluetit still reports "Command not found" (your log showed two of them before the network filter step), add the missing tool names to the tools list above. Running "journalctl -u bluetit" should show which feature failed. Cuckoo is only needed for per-application traffic splitting, so we suggest leaving it out for now. It must run setuid root, which is not possible inside the Nix store: store paths are immutable, built by unprivileged users, and Nix strips setuid bits and ownership from every file it adds. That is why your chown and chmod u+s failed. The NixOS way is security.wrappers: at every activation, NixOS creates a small setuid wrapper in /run/wrappers/bin, outside the store, with the owner, group and permissions you choose, and the wrapper starts the real binary from the store with root privileges. This is the same mechanism NixOS uses for sudo and ping. The next Suite release changes Cuckoo's installation requirements (it will be executable only by members of the airvpn group), and we will try to post the matching security.wrappers configuration then. Please let us know how it goes. If it works for you, your module could become a useful reference for other NixOS users. Kind regards

Hello! We reluctantly have to announce gloomy news to you all: Spooky Halloween Deals are now available in AirVPN... Save up to 74% on AirVPN longer plans (*) (*) When compared to 1 month plan price Deal will expire on 2026-11-03 UTC Check all plans and discounts here: https://airvpn.org/plans If you're already our customer and you wish to jump aboard for a longer period with this un-boo-lievable deal, any additional plan will be added on top of already existing subscriptions and you will not lose any day. Every plan gives you all the features that made AirVPN a nightmare for snoopers and a scary service for competitors. Just check this frighteningly long list of terrific features if you dare: a clear mission without compromises https://airvpn.org/mission exclusive and comfortable remote inbound port forwarding system flexible, opt-in block lists against malware and other hostile entities. Pick predefined lists, add exceptions or additional blocks, define your own lists, or just use our totally neutral DNS by default improved API functions to let you control and configure VPN features and account settings WireGuard integration AmneziaWG support in Eddie Android edition, with traffic mimicry of real websites (QUIC) to defeat DPI-based VPN blocking. This year our traffic wears a costume too: with AmneziaWG on Eddie Android, your connection goes trick-or-treating dressed up as an ordinary website, and DPI won't recognise who's behind the mask. Security-hardened Eddie Desktop edition Strong infrastructure growth: about 25% more total capacity in one year. Our servers grew by a ghastly 25% this year: more bandwidth to haunt the Internet at full speed. IPv6 support, including IPv6 over IPv4 and IPv4 over IPv6 refined load balancing to squeeze every last bit per second from VPN servers free and open source software for Android, Linux, Mac and Windows offering advanced features easy "Configuration Generator" web interface for access through third party software guaranteed minimum bandwidth allocation GDPR compliance and very high privacy protection standards no log and/or inspection of clients' traffic effective traffic leaks prevention by AirVPN software Tor support via AirVPN software on Linux, Mac and Windows various cryptocurrencies accepted without any intermediary no obligation to use our free and open source software to enter AirVPN infrastructure. Interoperability is an AirVPN priority. perfectly clear and easy to read Privacy Notice and Terms https://airvpn.org/privacy No tricks, only treats! We witch you a spooktacular Halloween AirVPN Staff

Hello! A quick follow-up on the WireGuard session counter issue mentioned above. The cause has been identified and fixed, and the fix is currently being rolled out across our infrastructure. Servers that have already received the update are back to reporting accurate figures, and the remaining ones will follow shortly, so the connection counts shown in the server monitor and in the related statistics will match reality again in the very near future. As previously stated, actual connections and the service itself have never been affected, only the displayed counter was. Kind regards

Thank you all for the valuable feedback. Following this thread, we have identified a bug, most likely introduced on October 7th-8th, which causes the WireGuard session counter on some servers to grow incorrectly over time. As a result, the number of connections currently shown in the server monitor is higher than the real one. The actual connections, and the service itself, are not affected. We are working on a fix and will update this thread as soon as it is in place. On a side note, this also means that our no-overselling commitment is honoured by an even wider margin than the one computed by @fsy Kind regards

Hello! We're very glad to inform you that a new 10 Gbit/s full duplex server located in New York City, USA, is available: Hiisi. The AirVPN client will show automatically the new server; if you use any other OpenVPN or WireGuard client you can generate all the files to access it through our configuration/certificates/key generator (menu "Client Area"->"Config generator"). The server accepts connections on ports 53, 80, 443, 1194, 2018 UDP and TCP for OpenVPN and ports 1637, 47107 and 51820 UDP for WireGuard. Hiisi supports OpenVPN over SSL and OpenVPN over SSH, TLS 1.3, OpenVPN tls-crypt and WireGuard. Full IPv6 support is included as well. As usual no traffic limits, no logs, no discrimination on protocols and hardened security against various attacks with separate entry and exit-IP addresses. You can check the status as usual in our real time servers monitor , by clicking the server name. Direct link: https://airvpn.org/servers/Hiisi Do not hesitate to contact us for any information or issue. Kind regards & datalove AirVPN Staff Photo by John Dillenbeck (Public Domain)

Hello, You do not need to travel or do anything illegal to have a reason to use a VPN. In addition to the points already mentioned by pHxaq, there are some practical uses: Accept incoming connections behind CGNAT. If your ISP does not provide a publicly reachable IPv4 address, a VPN with port forwarding can make selected services reachable through its servers. This can help with self-hosting, game servers or peer-to-peer applications, including sharing Linux distributions. AirVPN provides this feature; not every VPN does. Any exposed service still needs appropriate authentication and security. Work around routing problems. A VPN changes the route your traffic takes. This can sometimes avoid poor ISP peering or a problematic path to a destination. It is not a guaranteed speed improvement and cannot fix congestion on your own access line. Protect more than browser traffic. A properly configured VPN can cover applications and system services as well as your browser, adding encryption between your device and the VPN server. HTTPS and other end-to-end encryption remain necessary: the VPN tunnel does not extend all the way to every destination. Reduce interference by the local network. For traffic carried inside the tunnel, the network operator or wiretapping entities have less ability to inspect and no possibility to alter application requests or DNS queries or traffic content (no possibility of injecting forged packets). This can be useful even without travelling. For your de-Googling goal, a VPN is a complementary tool: it does not stop a logged-in service from recognizing you, remove tracking cookies, or prevent browser fingerprinting. Choosing applications and services that collect less data remains important. You also shift trust from your ISP to the VPN provider, rather than eliminating the need for trust. Whether you need one depends on which benefits matter to you. Linux and privacy-conscious applications are useful choices, but they address quite different parts of the problem. More information: https://airvpn.org/faq/port_forwarding/ https://ssd.eff.org/module/vpn.html Kind regards

Hello! Yes. To select another server automatically, exclude the current server when starting a new connection. For example, if you are connected to Comae: goldcrest --disconnect goldcrest --air-connect --air-black-server-list Comae Wait for disconnection to complete before running the second command. Replace Comae with your current server’s name. --reconnect alone does not request a different server. Alternatively, after disconnecting, choose a replacement explicitly: goldcrest --air-connect --air-server SERVER_NAME Replace SERVER_NAME with the desired server name. IMPORTANT: your usual Goldcrest authentication and Bluetit’s server/country restrictions still apply. To make an exclusion persistent, add: air-black-server-list Comae to your Goldcrest configuration (~/.config/goldcrest.rc or ~/.goldcrest.rc, depending on your setup). If you configured a fixed air-server, change or remove it when you want automatic selection. Please read the user's manual: https://gitlab.com/AirVPN/AirVPN-Suite/-/blob/master/AirVPN-Suite/README.md#goldcrest-configuration Kind regards

Hello! We believe we have identified the main cause of the recurring Los Angeles connectivity issues and have deployed measures that may have resolved them. Our monitoring shows a clear improvement, but we would appreciate your help confirming the results in everyday use. Could you please test the Los Angeles servers again and let us know whether you still experience interruptions or traffic stalls? If an issue recurs, please include the server name and the approximate time with your time zone so that we can correlate it with our monitoring. Thank you in advance! Kind regards

Hello! Thank you for the additional details and for correcting the incident time to October 5 at 07:58 UTC. We found a matching IPv4 reachability alarm for Revati, so our investigation includes IPv4 as well as IPv6. Our capacity measurements rule out sustained server overload from “too many users” during the period reviewed. We checked all five Los Angeles servers over September 29 - October 6: Peak sampled total CPU utilization remained below 36% on every server. Memory utilization remained below 5.6%. Connection-tracking table occupancy remained below 61% of capacity. The highest traffic rate measured over approximately five-minute intervals was 6.1 Gbit/s in both directions (6.1 + 6.1 = 12.2), on 10 Gbit/s full-duplex interfaces. At the reported time, Revati's total CPU utilization was approximately 20–24%, and its connection-tracking table was about 30% full. These measurements show substantial capacity headroom. They do not, however, exclude very brief network events or issues affecting individual paths or queues. We are investigating the recurring connectivity interruptions internally and are evaluating involving the provider to help establish their cause. The cause has not yet been confirmed. As previously explained, a partial failure percentage across our monitoring probes can coincide with a complete interruption on a particular customer's path. We appreciate the reports you have provided. Kind regards

Hello! Thank you, that clarification helps. Since your tunnel endpoint is reached over IPv4, the recurring IPv6 pattern we mentioned does not explain your experience. We see ICMPv4 nearby packet-loss reports for the servers you named: Sarin at about 07:20 UTC and Revati at about 07:58 UTC. These are close to, but do not exactly match, the 07:35 UTC time you reported. They come from distributed monitoring probes, so they cannot confirm what happened on your particular route. Could you tell us which VPN protocol and client you use, and whether the VPN connection itself disconnected or stayed connected while traffic stopped? If available, please also share the connection log covering a few minutes around 07:35 UTC, with any keys or credentials removed. This should help us compare the event with the server and network records. Kind regards