Hi folks, I’m just getting into this hobby thanks to the posts in this community. So far, I’ve installed Ubuntu server 22.04 on an old laptop and got paperless working, and I’m pretty pumped. Now I would like to access it outside of my home network on my phone.
I have a Netgear R7000 with Advanced Tomato installed. Here’s my plan, but I don’t know if it would work… So I’m hoping for a peer review of sorts.
- Get openVPN working on the router as a server.
- make a certificate for my phone and use it as a client.
- use my fedora laptop as the CA (?).
I think I need to use easy-RDA to make the keys and certificates…
Does that sound about right? It’s this a good approach or is there something better/easier/more effective?
If there’s a great tutorial around for accessing the home network externally, I’d super appreciate it. Would obviously prefer to do it myself and not pay for a service… I’ve been enjoying the learning experience!
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Tailscale
That’s the only word you need. Ultimately, traditional VPN is outdated and almost obsolete. Wireguard is the “next iteration” of network tunneling tech. And Tailscale just makes it super simple.
Omg its seems its working with cgnat, ill give this a try
It’s what I use to remote access to my Starlink network. Have it running on a little Linux box, and publishes my internal subnet so I can access any device on my network with Tailscale running on just one PC.
Neat, I’ll admit that im a bit late with vpn bandwagon, I’ve been fiddling around with dynamic dns and prays to the network gods that my LAN wont encounter some replicating malware or nasty stuff (although im monitoring it and has logs). And yea, wow, this thing is fast and easy.
+1 for Tailscale because it uses the WireGuard protocol. Tailscale just adds additional features on top of the WireGuard base. That much said, I am more interested in Slack’s Nebula project because it is completely open source. I like the approach Nebula is taking towards mesh networking. I’m just still struggling to get it working.
Tailscale using headscale is basically hosting your personal Tailscale network, which is nice and makes it open source too, just FYI
I just came across headscale…looks kinda neat. The docs have me a bit scared though - from the Installation section: “Configure Headscale by editing the configuration file”…uhm ya I’ll just go configure all of the things to do all of the stuff, hehe.
Use chat gpt to help you install it , I used it sometimes and it help me to understand it a lot.
Good idea…I just it a bunch for other stuff but hadn’t thought to use it for this. Thanks!
Chatgpt is a camp for just YOLOing off into some new software. Unless it is after the knowledge cutoff it’s pretty accurate about configurations and such. It makes mistakes but it’ll get you started a lost faster.
What I notice also is that if you keep feeding it with info about your problem and have discussion it will eventually figure it out.
Most of the time I just copy/paste the terminal output and say ‘it didn’t work’ and it’ll come back with ‘I’m sorry, I meant [new command]’.
It isn’t something that I’d trust to run unattended terminal commands (yet) but it is very good when you’re just like ‘Hey, I want to try to install pihole today, how do I install and configure it’, or ‘Here’s my IP Tables entry, why can’t I connect to this service’ … ‘Ok give me the commands to update the entry to do whatever it was you just said’.
I know it’s been mentioned before - but plain Wireguard is my way to go. KISS - keep it simple, stupid! setup might be a little bit of a learning curve, but once you got it for one device, others aren’t a big issue.
I had a CA, with OpenVPN, but that’s to much for a small setup like remote access to your home network.
Use it on iOS, Ubuntu and Windows to access my home services and DNS (Split-Tunnel).
It’s a pretty easy setup on OpenWrt. A quick look into the fresh tomato wiki tells me, that it shouldn’t be to complicated to achieve on your router (firmware). If you need help with setting Wireguard up, let me know, I’m happy to help out.
Big thanks to everyone that replied. Message received: ditch openVPN in favour of wireguard :-)
Uhm, status update: I just signed up for tailscale, and I’m able to access my home server after about 2 mins from first logging into the tailscale website. Wow…you guys weren’t kidding 🙃
So what should I do next?
Nas, Media server, device auto backups to nas, game server, chatgpt instance, Lemmy instance, a website, wiki, nextcloud, pihole, or home assistant.
If you intend to collect/store data or make more servers, a nas would probably be a good idea to have.
Ok, I have an incoming Lenovo M93P SFF to upgrade my really old laptop as a server, so your list will be super helpful. Thanks!
