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Skywire VPN Client

Introduction

This guide explains the setup procedure and includes operating instructions of the Skywire VPN Client. Please refer to the Skywire VPN Server guide in case you want to setup your own Skywire VPN Server.

Installation

Note

To use Skywire VPN, it is necessary to install Skywire on your computer.
To install skywire follow the guide:
- macOS
- Linux

The rest of this guide assumes that you have installed the Skywire Visor and generated configuration file.

Setup

Open skywire-config.json file and insert the public key of the server into the vpn-client field: 

{   
    "name": "vpn-client",
    "args": [
        "-srv",
        "033e4804bb27ad717aabb406afbb938edb2bd41d1d1485db1b68540bebdeb7c910"
    ],
    "auto_start": false,
    "port": 43
}
You can find a list of publically available VPN servers here.

Note

Skywire VPN Client requries root privileges to run.

To start the visor, run 

sudo ./skywire-visor skywire-config.json
Enter the password if prompted.

Run Skywire VPN Client without root

To set capabilities, run: 

sudo setcap 'cap_net_admin+p' ./apps/vpn-client
Start the visor: 
./skywire-visor ./skywire-config.json

Note

Binary has to be owned by root and have permissions like 4755

To change owner of binary to root, run: 

sudo chown root ./apps/vpn-client
To provide permissions, run: 
sudo chmod 4755 ./apps/vpn-client
Start the visor: 
./skywire-visor ./skywire-config.json

To establish a transport to the VPN server, replace the values below with the remote public key you selected: 

./skywire-cli visor add-tp 033e4804bb27ad717aabb406afbb938edb2bd41d1d1485db1b68540bebdeb7c910 --type stcpr

Note

The stcpr and sudph transports are the most performant. It is recommended to try to setup these transports first. If these are not available, setup a dmsg transport.

After setting up the transport, run the VPN: 

./skywire-cli visor start-app vpn-client

To stop the VPN Server, run: 

./skywire-cli visor stop-app vpn-server

Last update: 2021-10-21