IrcMeetings

Basic info

• Time: Wednesday 17 April 2024 at 13:00 CEST (11:00 UTC)
• Place: #openvpn-meeting channel on LiberaChat IRC network

Topics

Current topics

• New: updated 2.6.10 with new MSI installers
  There is a new Windows DCO driver that should handle coming back from hibernation better/faster, as it doesn't wait for keepalive timeout after hibernation.
  

• New: --topology directive
  We changed the default for this to be 'subnet' as this is the most commonly used setup and has been for ages (used to be net30).
  This is however breaking things by default for peer to peer setups. We could limit the change to just --server mode.
  djpig will propose a patch and it can be discussed further there.
  

• Closed: live route update feature
  In short, the ability to update routes, DNS, ifconfig options, live, without having to do a full reconnect.
  After discussing last week seems like a path forward is clear.
  

• Updated: Security mailing list procedure can stand improvement
  company will improve process on picking up tasks from security mailing list in the next week or so.
  The idea being that community guys will continue doing their thing as usual, and company guys monitor the list for company related items and follow up on those.
  The idea of an NDA is also revived. But it was made clear internally that we need like a one-page simple NDA for community members, not the unnecessarily restrictive one originally suggested by legal guys.
  

• Updated: DCO and Linux upstreaming, API change
  Upstreaming DCO to Linux is proceeding, it is in review stage at the moment.
  ordex will send a patchset v3 based on feedback received today.
  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)
  

• Updated: 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.
  

• Updated: forums topics
  ecrist still working on forums. waiting on ecrist to move things around.
  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.
  - 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: mattock topics
  Managed to make tests run reliably now, the occassional failures seem resolved now.
  Documentation here: ​https://github.com/mattock/openvpn/blob/dev_null/doc/dev-null-test-suite.rst
  Will submit a patch soon.
  

• 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
  

• website release process
  Waiting for faster way to update community downloads and security advisories on 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.
  

• 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
  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/
  company will send this to tech writer to redo based on ​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
  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 same cert type we use for driver signing, is also suitable for binary signing.
  in future we could possibly switch 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

Latest status in ServerSideTestingImprovementPlan. Additional details in ​https://github.com/mattock/openvpn/blob/dev_null/doc/dev-null-test-suite.rst. Current PoC code is available in mattock's "dev_null" branch. A good starting point is ​t_server_null.sh.

Potential next steps:

• Expand the test suite
• Integrate into Buildbot (i.e. get to production)
• Support multiple client versions (depends on Buildbot integration)

Git commit history needs to be cleaned up and there may be other small fixes / improvements here and there to be done:

• Enable disabling the test suite (requires root so we can't run it by default)

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
• 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)