Deploying on Fedora#

For simple one server deployments and tests, we have a deploy script available you can run on a fresh Fedora 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 Fedora installation with all updates installed and rebooted after updates;
SELinux MUST be enabled;
You SHOULD use 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 Fedora. If you, or your organization (heavily) modified the OS installation the VPN deployment MAY not work…

Base Deploy#

NOTE: make sure you have tar installed, the Fedora “minimal” image does not have tar:

$ sudo dnf -y install tar

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

$ curl -L -O https://codeberg.org/eduVPN/deploy/archive/v3.tar.gz
$ tar -xzf v3.tar.gz
$ cd deploy

Run the script (as root):

$ sudo -s
# ./deploy_fedora.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_fedora.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 demo and admin with a generated password for portal access. Those 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 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/httpd/conf.d/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_fedora.sh

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

After completing the script, the certificate will be installed and the system will automatically replace the certificate before it expires.

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.