Author: tomek

The method to organize all the tasks in my professional and personal life.

dnsmasq is a better solution for this purpose, but the goal is to play with Ansible.

It’s the continuation of the post: My own VPN on a VPS

The main goal is to play with Ansible. The second goal is to be able to connect to the hosts by their names rather then by their IPs. For this purpose, I will update /etc/hosts file on each host automatically by Ansible.

Preparing the host files on the Ansible server

In first place, I edit the hosts file on Ansible:

[root@vps-dc91297d ~]# tail -n3 /etc/hosts 
10.8.0.1 vps
10.8.0.2 komputer01
10.8.0.3 pi

Now, I will be able to use the hosts name in the Ansible configuration file.

Ansible installation

Why?

As described in the Privacy Project, I use my own Domain Name Server. It works great in the local network, but I am not able to access it from outside.

That’s why I need my own VPN server.

Other possible solutions

Port Forwarding on my home router – impossible, because I don’t have access to the admin’s configuration. Besides, I don’t have static IP. There are solutions like Dynamic DNS, but they are not reliable on the long run,

Tailscale (or other similar commercial solution) – it would work, but it’s not so much fun.

The VPN server configuration

The configuration is simple:

[root@vps-dc91297d fedora]# cat /etc/wireguard/wg0.conf 
[Interface]
Address = 10.8.0.1/24
ListenPort = 51820
PrivateKey = (redacted)

PostUp = firewall-cmd --direct --add-rule ipv4 filter FORWARD 0 -i wg0 -j ACCEPT
PostDown = firewall-cmd --direct --remove-rule ipv4 filter FORWARD 0 -i wg0 -j ACCEPT

# Example peer (add one per client)
[Peer]
PublicKey = (redacted)
AllowedIPs = 10.8.0.2/32

[Peer]
PublicKey = (redacted)
AllowedIPs = 10.8.0.3/32

The VPN Clients’ configuration

root@komputer01:/etc/wireguard# cat wg0.conf 
[Interface]
PrivateKey = (redacted)
Address = 10.8.0.3/24

[Peer]
PublicKey = (redacted) 
Endpoint = vpn.tomasz-avila.pl:51820
AllowedIPs = 10.8.0.0/24   # route all VPN traffic through the server
PersistentKeepalive = 25

The results

[root@vps-dc91297d fedora]# wg show
interface: wg0
  public key: (redacted)
  private key: (hidden)
  listening port: 51820

peer: c2dz9nLrd7bYfyTFj7fMQHBMkHaIz7GFoH1bRK+ermY=
  endpoint: 46.205.194.178:60080
  allowed ips: 10.8.0.3/32
  latest handshake: 15 seconds ago
  transfer: 10.89 MiB received, 3.80 MiB sent

peer: XoOt5kWRfvUSFf8I+SGUHcDcC9TeNloifDspq9uw0BI=
  endpoint: 185.246.208.88:39392
  allowed ips: 10.8.0.2/32
  latest handshake: 1 minute, 5 seconds ago
  transfer: 4.07 MiB received, 11.15 MiB sent

Now, I am able to connect to all my devices from all around the world.

Just for fun

Why does it matters?

Why does it matters paragraph

Web Browser: Librewolf

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Custom DNS on Raspberry PI

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Private notes: Joplin

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Private files: Cryptomator

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Accessing DNS from outside LAN

I will describe it in the following article:

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