Deploying on Debian & Ubuntu#

For simple one server deployments and tests, we have a deploy script available you can run on a fresh Debian >= 11 or Ubuntu LTS >= 22.04 installation. It will configure all components and will be ready for use after running!

Additional scripts are available after deployment:

Use Let’s Encrypt for automatic web server certificate management;

Requirements#

Clean Debian >= 11, or Ubuntu LTS >= 22.04 installation with all updates installed and rebooted after updates;
Have a STATIC IPv4 and IPv6 address configured on your external interface;
Network equipment/VM platform allows access to the very least tcp/80, tcp/443, udp/1194, tcp/1194 and udp/51820 for basic functionality, the deploy script will take care of the host firewall;
Working DNS entry for your VPN server, e.g. vpn.example.org.
Have the correct hostname configured on your system. Use hostnamectl set-hostname vpn.example.org (as root) to set your hostname. If you need to change the hostname, reboot after to make sure it “sticks”.

If you have a more complicated setup, we recommend to manually walk through the deploy script and follow the steps.

NOTE: we only test with relatively clean and unmodified installations of Debian/Ubuntu. If you, or your organization (heavily) modified the OS installation the VPN deployment MAY not work…

Base Deploy#

Perform these steps on the host where you want to deploy:

$ sudo apt -y install ca-certificates wget
$ wget https://codeberg.org/eduVPN/deploy/archive/v3.tar.gz
$ tar -xzf v3.tar.gz
$ cd deploy

We assume you have sudo installed and configured for your user first, after this:

$ sudo -s
# ./deploy_debian.sh

NOTE: if the script does NOT suggest the actual hostname you want to use on your system, make sure you configure your hostname first, see above.

NOTE: you can NOT use localhost as a hostname, nor an IP address!

NOTE: by default there is NO firewall for the traffic between VPN client and VPN server. So if you have SSH running on your server, the clients will be able to connect to it when you don’t take additional steps! Look here.

NOTE: if you want to use the Development Repository for your installation, which has development releases and supports additional OSes/architectures, use:

# USE_DEV_REPO=y ./deploy_debian.sh

Update#

During the deployment you are asked whether to enable automatic updates. If you choose y, the default, a cronjob is installed in /etc/cron.weekly/vpn-maint-update-system.

See Install Updates for manual installation of updates.

Configuration#

VPN#

See Profile Config on how to update the VPN server settings.

Authentication#

Username & Password#

By default there is a user vpn with a generated password for portal access. The credentials are printed at the end of the deploy script.

If you want to update/add users you can use vpn-user-portal-account. Provide an existing account to update the password:

$ sudo -u www-data vpn-user-portal-account --add foo
Setting password for user "foo"
Password: 
Password (repeat):

You can configure which user(s) is/are an administrator by setting the adminUserIdList option in /etc/vpn-user-portal/config.php, e.g.:

'adminUserIdList' => ['foo'],

LDAP#

It is easy to enable LDAP authentication. This is documented separately. See LDAP.

RADIUS#

It is easy to enable RADIUS authentication. This is documented separately. See RADIUS.

SAML#

It is easy to enable SAML authentication for identity federations, this is documented separately. See SAML.

Permissions#

If you want to restrict the use of the VPN a bit more than on whether someone has an account or not, e.g. to limit certain profiles to certain (groups of) users, see Permissions.

Optional#

Web Server Certificates#

By default a self-signed certificate is used for the web server. You can install your own certificates, and tweak /etc/apache2/sites-available/vpn.example.org.conf to point to them, or use Let’s Encrypt using the script mentioned below.

Let’s Encrypt#

Run the script (as root) from the documentation folder:

$ sudo -s
# ./lets_encrypt_debian.sh

Make sure you use the exact same DNS name you used when running deploy_debian.sh!

After completing the script, the certificate will be installed. It is set to automatically renew when necessary and gracefully reload Apache after the certificate has been replaced.

Theme#

You can activate Portal Branding if you want.

If you also want to allow clients to connect with the VPN over tcp/443, see Port Sharing.