# IrcMeetings ## Basic info - **Time**: Wednesday 10 April 2024 at 13:00 CEST (11:00 UTC) - **Place**: #openvpn-meeting channel on LiberaChat IRC network ## Topics ### Current topics - **Updated: live route update feature** - In short, the ability to update routes, DNS, ifconfig options, live, without having to do a full reconnect. - One example where this solves an issue is when 1000 users are connected to a server, and you change a route that applies to all. You'd end up temporarily almost DDoS-ing yourself. - As discussed last week, Lev has put together a proposal from which we can build a specification. - The plan is to get approval for the specification first. Then CloudConnexa/openvpn3 will get this implemented. - In discussion with ordex it seems he and giaan can take on creating the OpenVPN2 server and client implementations. - Proposal here: [https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/edit/w1SE-ttFQphTrgZALaG8o8YE/](https://cryptpad.fr/pad/#/2/pad/edit/w1SE-ttFQphTrgZALaG8o8YE/) - DYNAMIC_ROUTES message name is too limited to just routes, we instead prefer PUSH_UPDATE. - Initially PUSH_UPDATE will support routes, DNS, and ifconfig options, to update network related settings on the client. This could be expanded in the future. - **Updated: forums topics** - ecrist still working on forums. DNS record for archive of old forums was finally correctly created. - Plan is to soon switch URLs so new forum is on forums.openvpn.net and old forums is on archive address. - - email confirmation on registration was suggested. - - we still need to work on having some other people with some admin or high mod access. - - mod guide, hard or soft delete (chuck board?), what to do with GDPR, etc. (write it down and actually make it available to mods, maybe a hidden topic) - - access for mods to logs so one can see what others did - **Updated: OpenVPN community meetup 2024** - Naming: We decided to rename from 'Hackathon' to 'OpenVPN community meetup'. This has a more open spirit to it. - Where: Karlsruhe, Germany. Meeting room location to be determined. - When: At the moment tentatively set to 20-22 September 2024. - Who: We'll do an open invitation to openvpn-devel mailing list, but also CC: specifically past attendees and people of interest. - Shirts: There is plenty of time still to prepare a shirt design. - There's a wiki page up now where we can coordinate: [https://community.openvpn.net/openvpn/wiki/CommunityMeetup2024](https://community.openvpn.net/openvpn/wiki/CommunityMeetup2024) - **mattock topics** - Separated test data from code in --dev null tests. - Also started on debian snapshot publishing but didn't get very far there yet. - Will next look at remove sudo root requirement from --dev null server-side. - Figure out if reliability can be increased further (i.e. why did it fail 4 out of 500 times). - **DCO and Linux upstreaming, API change** - Upstreaming DCO to Linux is proceeding, it is in review stage at the moment. - ordex will prepare a v3 patchset soon based on feedback received. - There will be an API change that makes it incompatible with the current implementation. - A graceful solution to that was already discussed and in motion. giaan will be working on this. - (in a nutshell, make OpenVPN understand old and new API, DKMS and kernel versions both will then use new API, then we drop old API) - **website release process** - Waiting for a faster way to update community downloads and security advisories on the main site. - Again postponed due to issues. Now planned for this week. We'll see. - **Security mailing list procedure can stand improvement** - dazo and novaflash will start discussing this internally in openvpn inc. - The goal of discussions is to work out a better internal procedure to connect the security mailing list better with company product responsible people. - **donation collection** - ordex consulted an expert and it looks like doing a legal entity does not make sense when you're just starting out. - The tricky part here is that only if we get a lot of donations and a lot of money does it make sense to have that kind of overhead. - What we can do is start out with a company that collects the money and puts it to good community use. ordex volunteers to take this on. - We want the donations to be collected in one place, and expenses made from that one place, so we are accountable. - We need to figure out how to deal with that legally, and what payment methods to accept and how. - Probably credit card is a must. Maybe PayPal as well. Bitcoin seems to encounter some resistance in the discussions. - And a reminder; we definitely do not want the donation thing to be forced - have a mechanism to do it, but keep it out of the way. - **Status of SBOM** - There was a discussion between MaxF and djpig and others. - For OpenVPN2 / OpenVPN-NL, there is not much overlap, as OpenVPN2 doesn't ship much in terms of libraries, but OpenVPN-NL does. - The interesting use-case for an SBOM is really the OpenVPN Windows GUI client. - **status of trac/wiki** - No progress since last meeting. - This will probably have to wait until "--dev null" is done - Should have access controls so only approved members can edit. - **Tunnelcrack progress [TunnelCrack community wiki article](https://community.openvpn.net/openvpn/wiki/TunnelCrack)** - Current status: when mitigations start appearing we will mention them in meeting notes. - **Static-key mini how-to is outdated.** - This page is outdated badly: [https://openvpn.net/community-resources/static-key-mini-howto/](https://openvpn.net/community-resources/static-key-mini-howto/) - The company will send this to a tech writer to redo based on [https://github.com/OpenVPN/openvpn/blob/master/doc/man-sections/example-fingerprint.rst](https://github.com/OpenVPN/openvpn/blob/master/doc/man-sections/example-fingerprint.rst) info and also retain a link to that GitHub doc. Having a simple guide online will help adoption. - **OpenVPN 2.6 performance results.** - tests should cover: gre, ipsec, userland, dco - linux, freebsd, windows - requires time to be dedicated to doing this, when time available will do it - **What's going on with new taskbar icons?** - matt provided icons in [https://github.com/OpenVPN/openvpn-gui/issues/595](https://github.com/OpenVPN/openvpn-gui/issues/595) - last update: will be picked up by selva when he has time - **software code signing topic** - company switched EV code signing to cloudhsm, this is the same cert type we use for driver signing, is also suitable for binary signing. - in the future, we could possibly switch the community to that same key. saves having to maintain 2 different keys. - depends on how hard/easy it is to access company key signing thingee from community infrastructure. - also no high priority at the moment, we have a working solution now. - **Management interface documentation on main website will be updated with info from doc/management-notes.txt** - novaflash will pick this up at some point ## Mattock topics ### --dev null server testing Mattock has improved the so-called "--dev null server testing" and integrated it with "make check". The features are: - Does what it says on the tin - Mostly operating-system agnostic - Should be POSIX shell compliant but uses Bash now - Uses the sample certificates and keys - Supports running directly as root and with sudo - Supports using different OpenVPN client versions - The "current" (just compiled) version - Any other OpenVPN versions (must be present on the filesystem) - Support testing for success as well as failure - Test cases (client configurations) and server setups (server configurations) are stored in a configuration file, i.e. data and code have been separated - Configuration file format is nearly identical to t_client.rc configuration Here's how it works: 1. **make check** 1. **t_server_null.sh** 1. **t_server_null_server.sh** - Launches the compiled OpenVPN server instances as root (if necessary with sudo) - OpenVPN servers exit when all clients have disconnected from all servers 1. **t_server_null_client.sh** - Launches each individual client test - Client kills itself after some delay using an "--up" script Current PoC code is available in mattock's "dev_null" branch. A good starting point is [t_server_null.sh](https://github.com/mattock/openvpn/blob/dev_null/tests/t_server_null.sh). ### Debian/Ubuntu snapshot publishing - In the last meeting we agreed to publish snapshot Debian/Ubuntu packages on build.openvpn.net - The tool to use to publish is [aptly](https://www.aptly.info/) - aptly does not have direct support for running commands (e.g. rsync, scp) after publishing packages, e.g., to a local filesystem on the buildmaster - **Option 1 (hacky)**: use inotifywait with rsync or scp to copy the published repo to build.openvpn.net - **Option 2 (less hacky)**: use NFS to publish "directly" to build.openvpn.net - Both options require a fair amount of tinkering - Mattock moved this forward a bit at the buildbot end (get the files out from workers)