VPN Gate for Network Manager

A script that makes it easy to connect Network Manager to a VPN Gate

Feature

• Everything is written in shell scripts.
• Use the CSV API of VPN Gate
• Cache the server list
• Automatically update the cache
• Specializes in NetworkManager
• All actual configuration of the system is done via nmcli
• Supports server list by GUI (GTK and Qt)
• Server filtering using regular expressions in config files
• Automatically connects to a server that matches the specified conditions
• Automatically remove settings that failed to connect
• Automatically connects with Systemd Unit

Support VPN method

• OpenVPN (Install networkmanager-openvpn)
• L2TP (Install networkmanager-strongswan networkmanager-l2tp)

Dependency

This script is developed on Arch Linux and test on Arch Linux and Ubuntu.

In previous versions, there were some GNU dependencies.

If you don't use the GUI, you don't need to install kdialog and zenity.

• Systemd
• networkmanager (nmcli)
• networkmanager-openvpn
• networkmanager-strongswan
• networkmanager-l2tp
• bash 5.x (Tested version is 5.1.8, 5.8.16)
• curl
• zenity (for GTK server list)
• kdialog (for Qt server list)

Use for trial

Clone the git repository and run nm-vpngate

git clone https://github.com/Hayao0819/nm-vpngate.git
bash nm-vpngate/nm-vpngate

Install

By installing it, you can use global configuration files, Systemd Unit, etc.

Arch Linux

yay -S nm-vpngate-git

Other Linux

git clone https://github.com/Hayao0819/nm-vpngate.git
cd nm-vpngate/
sudo make install

NixOS (flake)

This repository is a Nix flake. It exposes a package, an overlay, and a NixOS module.

Add it to your flake inputs:

{
  inputs.nm-vpngate.url = "github:Hayao0819/nm-vpngate";
}

Then enable the module in your NixOS configuration:

{ inputs, ... }:
{
  imports = [ inputs.nm-vpngate.nixosModules.default ];

  networking.networkmanager.enable = true;

  services.nm-vpngate = {
    enable = true;
    autoConnect = true;       # start a systemd service that connects on boot
    vpnType = "L2TP";         # "OPENVPN" or "L2TP"
    country = "JP";           # regex against CountryShort, e.g. "JP|US"
    dns = [ "1.1.1.1" "8.8.8.8" ];

    # Free-form keys written to /etc/nm-vpngate.conf (override the high-level
    # options above when the same key is set in both).
    settings = {
      MODE = "AUTO";
      AUTO_TARGET = "Score";
      AUTO_COND = "MAX";
      KEEP_CACHE = 43200;
    };

    # extraConfig = ''
    #   FIX_OPENVPN_CONFIG=("cipher")
    # '';
  };
}

The matching NetworkManager VPN plugin (networkmanager-openvpn or networkmanager-l2tp) is added to networking.networkmanager.plugins automatically based on vpnType.

Run the CLI without enabling the module:

nix run github:Hayao0819/nm-vpngate -- -a -t l2tp

Or pull just the package via the overlay:

nixpkgs.overlays = [ inputs.nm-vpngate.overlays.default ];
environment.systemPackages = [ pkgs.nm-vpngate ];

Usage

See nm-vpngate -h for normal command usage.

If you want to use systemd service to connect VPN Gate automatically, run it to enable service.

sudo systemctl enable nm-vpngate

Read the comments in nm-vpngate.conf to use advanced settings such as filters.

All settings can be changed in the configuration file.

Related directories and files

These are the directories used by nm-vpngate.

Some of these can be changed in the configuration file.

• (DIR) ~/.nm-vpngate/
  Script saves openvpn config to the directory

• (DIR) /tmp/nm-vpngate.${UID} Script saves temporary data.

• (FILE) /tmp/nm-vpngate.${UID}/servers Script saves the cache to the file

• (FILE) /tmp/nm-vpngate.${UID}/connected Script saves the name of the last VPN you connected to

• (FILE) /etc/nm-vpngate.conf ~/.nm-vpngate.conf ~/.config/nm-vpngate.conf
  Script loads config from them

Related Project

• sarukiti/vpngate_droid VPN Gate for Android