o_vpn_connect

Connecting with open-vpn under Ubuntu is usually done via terminal. This forces you to keep a terminal open for the connection.

There are existing GUI solutions that monitor an open-vpn connections, but these usually do not work if connecting to the network is done via a bash script that has to do additional stuff, like reading the company certificate.

This solution is especially tailored to this use case. It uses pexpect to handle the openvpn-connection and therefore works with any openvpn based connection process.

Setup

Install apt dependencies:

sudo apt install libgirepository1.0-dev

sudo apt-get install python3-cairo-dev

sudo apt-get install gir1.2-appindicator3-0.1

Clone the repository.

Change to the project directory and run:

pip install -r requirements.txt

Run the setup script:

sudo ./bin/one_time_setup

When first starting the application it will create a configure_connection.yaml in the directory root. No connection will be established until not all of it's parameters are properly supplied. (It should look as follows.)

# Change this to your credentials (take a look at the source code if you are suspicious at that point. which is understandable)

SUDO_PW: ""
USER_NAME: ""
USER_PW: ""

# The public ipv4 address visible from the outside after connecting with the vpn.
# This is there to check if a connection was established. Or if you are already connected to the vpn via another ürpces.

VPN_PUB_IP: ""

# Path to the script that will run openvpn internally

OPENVPN_SCRIPT_PATH: ""

Check out your setup

Run the application from terminal which will provide you with additional information if everything was setup correctly.

./bin/connect_vpn

Running this project

After the setup a launch menu entry named: O-VPN-Connect is added and can just be clicked / or run it from the terminal like above.

After startup an application indicator will appear next to the wifi symbol (in ubuntu atleast). You will figure it out from there? right ?

Improvements

May the reader be encouraged to improve the below described issue and any other he/she may encounter.

Security issue

At the moment login credentials reside in a plain text file. This is a security issue, obviously.

! Use this project and any of it's content fully at your own risk !.

Attribution

This site or product includes IP2Location LITE data available from https://lite.ip2location.com.