IrcMeetings

Basic info

• Time: Wednesday 8 January 2025 at 14:00 CEST (12:00 UTC)
• Place: #openvpn-meeting channel on LiberaChat IRC network

Topics

Current topics

• New: 2.6.x release
  Plan to do a 2.6.13 next Wednesday with the assorted patches that are in release/2.6.

• Updated: DCO Linux upstreaming
  Upstreaming DCO to Linux is proceeding, it is in review stage at the moment.
  Patchset v13 and v14 followed really fast and v14 is now under review.
  Interesting news article appeared on the webs: Phoronix News on OpenVPN DCO

• Reminder: t_server_null improvements
  ovpnlwip seems to work fine on all linux platforms, based on buildbot tests.
  Waiting review. djpig promises to do it today.

• Updated: multi-socket support
  Now in review. Patchset v11 should be going out this week.
  Parts of the Patchset have been merged. Work ongoing
  Gerrit multisocket

• Updated: new --dns option support
  Now in review. d12fk sent in patchset for new --dns option support.
  Gerrit DNS Option Support

• Updated: community.openvpn.net wiki
  A more suitable production deployment schema for otterwiki has been submitted upstream. That does not block us however.
  mattock has prepared some Puppet code to deploy otterwiki and says it should be ready. He asks for a reset of the host
  since he had some invasive changes (e.g. switch from docker to podman) and starting from scratch is easier and cleaner.
  uddr35 will assists with that.

• Updated: data format v3 / epoch data keys
  RFC is here: GitHub RFC Pull Request.
  plaisthos is working to implement it in openvpn3 first.
  MaxF reviewed the RFC and commented that it looks good.
  Patchset is in Gerrit: Gerrit Epoch Data

• Updated: DCO windows multi-peer
  lev has submitted patchset for the userspace implementation.
  Gerrit DCO Windows Multi-peer

• Updated: Release 2.7
  ../../Development/StatusOfOpenvpn27 was updated with the results from Karlsruhe meetup.
  compare wiki:CommunityMeetup2024.
  Want to do a first preview release as soon as possible, but need to get at least one of the big patch series in, preferably multi-socket.

• New: OpenVPN SEO
  There is a request from OpenVPN whether we could exclude build.openvpn.net and gerrit.openvpn.net from search engines to not muddle search
  results for openvpn with developer-only resources. We will need more information about the actual problem they see before doing something like that.

Backlog

• push_update / live route updates
  There have been some initial tests on a server implementation in PG.
  There is a server-side bug that will be fixed in PG, and a request to support a few more options (keepalive options).
  lev will add keepalive to OpenVPN3 code.
  mrbff and ordex will implement the openvpn2 server and client support for push_update.

• TLS-exporter in mbedtls
  Needed for TLS 1.3 support with openvpn and mbedtls - TLS-exporter currently missing in mbedtls.
  maxf reports he's making some progress on implementing this - currently working to ensure all unit tests in all million billions of configurations work.

• snapshot releases via Chocolatey software
  mattock contacted the Chocolate package maintainer for OpenVPN and asked if he would be okay with publishing Windows MSI snapshots as well.
  Seems like the maintainer is amenable to helping us achieve that goal.

• OpenVPN community meetup 2025
  Community Meetup 2025
  When: september/october ish, a poll for checking availibity is here: Nuudel Poll
  Where: Napoli, Italy.
  Meeting room: tbd.
  Hotel: tbd.
  Beer: yes.
  T-shirts: yes.

• 2.7 security audit
  ordex mentioned that OTF offers the possibility to get a 3rd-party security audit for supported projects. So we will apply for that around or after the 2.7 release to review the latest code.

• forums topics
  novaflash has access and is working on a PoC setup combining old and new on an ubuntu server.

• Tunnelcrack progress TunnelCrack community wiki article
  Status update on TunnelCrack mitigations:
  The tunnelcrack mitigation for Windows has gone in master, which will go to 2.7 release. There is the possibility for it to go to 2.6.x if we can find testers for this.
  Windows, openvpn2: merged to master, not to 2.6.x. openvpn3: in code review.
  Linux, openvpn2: in progress. openvpn3: in progress.
  macOS: to be determined.
  iOS: to be determined.
  Android: not vulnerable.

• run tests of 2.x against openvpn3? how?
  There is a 'null client' variant of ovpncli that allows to make VPN connections but not fully, for testing purposes.
  This is in the openvpn3 repository.

• donation collection
  From earlier exploration it is clear that setting up a legal entity is not worth the expense at this point. We're just starting out with donations.
  What we can do is start out with an existing company that can collect the money and puts it to good community use. ordex volunteers to take this on.
  There are some options to consider. There may be existing solutions that we want to consider.
  PayPal seems overly expensive with all their fees.
  Stripe could be worth considering for credit card processing.
  GitHub Sponsors was mentioned as a possible solution, this is worth investigating.
  Open Collective was also mentioned, that needs some investigating how that exactly would work for us.

• Community AWS account governance
  Currently the Community AWS account is part of the OpenVPN, Inc. AWS organization
  With the OTF founding there would be opportunity to move to a separate AWS account that is not under the corporate umbrella.
  Requires further discussion whether that is something we want.

• 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.

• 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.

• Static-key mini how-to is outdated.
  This page is outdated badly: Static Key Mini How-to
  The company will send this to a tech writer to redo based on GitHub Example Fingerprint 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 GitHub Issue #595
  Last update: will be picked up by selva when he has time.

• Software code signing topic
  The 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 the company key signing thing from community infrastructure.
  Also, no high priority at the moment, we have a working solution now.