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#1 2015-10-21 05:00:04

emacsomancer
Member
Registered: 2014-09-20
Posts: 211

PIA VPN Linux beta app on Arch

The fairly popular VPN service Private Internet Access ("PIA") has a beta app for Linux, available here: https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/f … linux-beta

The installation instructions are tailored more towards Ubuntu.  Of course, one can connect to PIA without the app, just using openvpn. The disadvantage of this is that one is limited to Blowfish-CBC 128bit / SHA1 160bit encryption, whereas with the app up to AES-256 / SHA256 / RSA-4096 is available. See https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/f … th-pia-app

I managed to get the beta Linux app working on two different Arch installations, but it's not particularly straightforward.  These are my rough notes, in case they're useful to anyone else. There may be some package dependencies I don't know about, because I already had them installed for something else (I ran into this issue when installing on the 2nd machine).

* pacman -S lib32-libjpeg ; cd /usr/lib32 ; ln -s libjpeg.so libjpeg.so.62
* pacman -S openvpn libxss net-tools (the latter for ifconfig)
* also needed, some gstreamer package (not sure - I have 1.6 & 0.10 & 0.10-base 0.10-base-plugins and the lib32 versions of the last 3 packages)
* libappindicator-{gtk2,gtk3,sharp} (probably all of them aren't need, but at least one of them is, and I'm not sure which)
* libgnutls26
* libgcrypt15

In theory one could edit the installer script, which expects apt-get, but it'll run, with complaints, and install `pia.sh` in the user home once all of the package dependencies are met. In fact, it'll install `pia.sh` whether or not the dependencies are met, which is useful, in that one can edit `pia.sh` so that errors *aren't* directed to /dev/null, which can be useful in figuring out which packages may be missing.

In the end, the "active ingredient" ends up `openvpn` anyway. I can see the following process running:

openvpn --client --persist-key --persist-tun --comp-lzo yes --dev tun --script-security 2 --remote 26.142.110.139 8080 --auth-user-pass /home/emacsomancer/.pia_manager/data/user_pass.txt --writepid /home/emacsomancer/.pia_manager/log/openvpn.pid --proto udp --nobind --management 127.0.0.1 31749 --log-append /home/emacsomancer/.pia_manager/log/openvpn.log --remote-cert-tls server --cipher aes-256-cbc --auth sha256 --ca /home/emacsomancer/.pia_manager/data/ca.crt --pia-signal-settings --daemon

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#2 2015-12-08 16:23:40

archingforward
Member
Registered: 2015-12-08
Posts: 12

Re: PIA VPN Linux beta app on Arch

Thanks to your helpful post, I was also able to install this beta PIA client. It sure would've been nice to have a AUR package however. Glad it's working. Thanks

I'm curious if your UI looks a bit crowded at the bottom like mine does?

http://i.imgur.com/NGN01E8.png




--  read the Forum Etiquette and only post thumbnails http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/For … s_and_code [jwr] --

Last edited by archingforward (2015-12-08 16:38:15)

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#3 2015-12-08 16:50:18

emacsomancer
Member
Registered: 2014-09-20
Posts: 211

Re: PIA VPN Linux beta app on Arch

Glad if it was helpful. I've thought about trying to make an AUR package for it, but have not done so yet due to the time committment (would have to learn how to make AUR packages generally, would have to start with a fresh Arch install in a VM to see exactly what packages are needed, etc.)

No, my UI is not crowded like that. The only difference though is that the Advanced/Simple and Save button are below the Region area.  I would assume that has something to do with the DE/WM (or perhaps GTK or QT settings/version). Can you change the size of the UI?  On my machine it seems to default to being as big as it needs to be in order to contain everything; while it looks like you get scrollbars (Gnome?)

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#4 2015-12-08 18:42:20

archingforward
Member
Registered: 2015-12-08
Posts: 12

Re: PIA VPN Linux beta app on Arch

As I'm pretty new to Arch (but loving it), I've yet to create any AUR packages. I'd like to at some point. I'd imagine this isn't exactly the simplest package to undertake compared to many I've installed. Could be an interesting project to work on. If interested, we could put our brains (and time) together.

I'm not sure what's up with my UI if yours looks ok. I assumed it was because it was beta software.

Running: cinnamon 2.8.5-2
gtk2 2.24.28-1
gtk3 3.18.5-1

I'm not able to change the size of the UI, it appears to be fixed. I do have that one scroll bar on the right as you've pointed out. I've tried lxqt and xfce with similar results. It's a minor issue, but the UI doesnt fit quite right and still has 1 or 2 scroll bars. I'm not going to worry about it.

Last edited by archingforward (2015-12-08 19:29:29)

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#5 2015-12-09 06:32:43

emacsomancer
Member
Registered: 2014-09-20
Posts: 211

Re: PIA VPN Linux beta app on Arch

archingforward wrote:

As I'm pretty new to Arch (but loving it), I've yet to create any AUR packages. I'd like to at some point. I'd imagine this isn't exactly the simplest package to undertake compared to many I've installed. Could be an interesting project to work on. If interested, we could put our brains (and time) together.

I'm not sure what's up with my UI if yours looks ok. I assumed it was because it was beta software.

Running: cinnamon 2.8.5-2
gtk2 2.24.28-1
gtk3 3.18.5-1

I'm not able to change the size of the UI, it appears to be fixed. I do have that one scroll bar on the right as you've pointed out. I've tried lxqt and xfce with similar results. It's a minor issue, but the UI doesnt fit quite right and still has 1 or 2 scroll bars. I'm not going to worry about it.

I'm running with AwesomeWM & no DE, but I don't if that's the issue. It could be there's some other package I have installed that makes it work. I dunno. I hardly ever open up the Setting menu (essentially never), so it indeed doesn't seem worth worrying over.

I do have other weirdness with the UI though - the tray icon has an empty space to its left (something weird about their sizing of the icon, I suspect).

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#6 2015-12-10 01:21:59

nstgc
Member
Registered: 2014-03-17
Posts: 393

Re: PIA VPN Linux beta app on Arch

Is there an advantage to using the client instead of configuring openvpn?

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#7 2015-12-10 01:27:55

jasonwryan
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From: .nz
Registered: 2009-05-09
Posts: 30,424
Website

Re: PIA VPN Linux beta app on Arch

nstgc wrote:

Is there an advantage to using the client instead of configuring openvpn?

OP wrote:

Of course, one can connect to PIA without the app, just using openvpn. The disadvantage of this is that one is limited to Blowfish-CBC 128bit / SHA1 160bit encryption, whereas with the app up to AES-256 / SHA256 / RSA-4096 is available. See https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/f … th-pia-app


Arch + dwm   •   Mercurial repos  •   Surfraw

Registered Linux User #482438

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#8 2015-12-17 19:00:39

archingforward
Member
Registered: 2015-12-08
Posts: 12

Re: PIA VPN Linux beta app on Arch

emacsomancer, how has PIA been working for you with the beta client/app? Some days it's quick and connects right up, some days I can't seem to get Internet access. I'm back online using NetworkManager with OpenVPN. Any issues there for you?

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#9 2015-12-17 19:16:18

emacsomancer
Member
Registered: 2014-09-20
Posts: 211

Re: PIA VPN Linux beta app on Arch

archingforward wrote:

emacsomancer, how has PIA been working for you with the beta client/app? Some days it's quick and connects right up, some days I can't seem to get Internet access. I'm back online using NetworkManager with OpenVPN. Any issues there for you?

I run the PIA beta client on both my desktop and my laptop. On my desktop I have it autostart after boot, and then my desktop doesn't get rebooted for days or weeks usually. As long as I don't lose internet connectivity, the PIA beta client stays active with no problem on the desktop.  If I lose internet connectivity, then I have to kill the PIA client and restart in order to for things to work properly (otherwise I have no connectivity, despite the PIA icon being light green).

On the laptop, I have a systemd unit set to kill the PIA beta client when the machine sleeps, and then another unit set to restart the PIA beta client whenever the network reconnects.  This generally works well, but 1 time out of 4, I end up with no internet connectivity, and I have to kill the client, and turn WiFi off and back on.

I had similar issues even when using the plain OpenVPN option though. (As an aside, the PIA beta client also ends up using OpenVPN, as you can see if you do ```ps aux``` or ```(h)top```.)

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#10 2015-12-17 19:28:25

archingforward
Member
Registered: 2015-12-08
Posts: 12

Re: PIA VPN Linux beta app on Arch

oh great input. Care to share your systemd units? I'll try killing the beta client right now and see how it goes. ...  Yup PIA client works great now.

Last edited by archingforward (2015-12-17 19:32:25)

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#11 2015-12-17 19:39:08

emacsomancer
Member
Registered: 2014-09-20
Posts: 211

Re: PIA VPN Linux beta app on Arch

On my laptop I have the following two systemd services in my /etc/systemd/system/ directory:

vpnpia@.service

[Unit]
Description=Restart PIA VPN
Requires=network.target
After=network.target

[Service]
Environment=DISPLAY=:0
User=%I
Type=forking
ExecStart=/usr/bin/sh /home/USER/pia.sh
Restart=always
RestartSec=15

[Install]
WantedBy=network.target

suspend@.service

[Unit]
Description=User suspend actions
Before=suspend.target

[Service]
User=%I
Environment=DISPLAY=:0
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=-/usr/bin/pkill -f pia
ExecStartPost=/usr/bin/sleep 5

[Install]
WantedBy=sleep.target

started with:

systemctl enable --now vpnpia@USER
systemctl enable --now suspend@USER

Where USER should of course be replaced with your username

Last edited by emacsomancer (2015-12-17 19:40:50)

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#12 2015-12-22 17:12:05

archingforward
Member
Registered: 2015-12-08
Posts: 12

Re: PIA VPN Linux beta app on Arch

Thanks emacsomancer. I'll pop those in at some point. Currenty, it seems like PIA is hit or miss on when it's working well or not even giving me interest access. I rebooted a few times, fiddled around with a bunch of different things, and finally got on my manually selecting a specific server rather than auto. Just taking it as it comes...

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#13 2015-12-29 03:27:54

emacsomancer
Member
Registered: 2014-09-20
Posts: 211

Re: PIA VPN Linux beta app on Arch

archingforward wrote:

Thanks emacsomancer. I'll pop those in at some point. Currenty, it seems like PIA is hit or miss on when it's working well or not even giving me interest access. I rebooted a few times, fiddled around with a bunch of different things, and finally got on my manually selecting a specific server rather than auto. Just taking it as it comes...

Sometimes auto works well, sometimes not. Sometimes it'll connect with auto, but give really bad speeds. Of course, it'll depend on your location, but I've had good luck generally with Toronto, London, Netherlands, Silicon Valley when selecting manually.

Generally, the hit or miss nature of PIA seems constant across plain openvpn or beta app. It won't auto-recover, so if you internet connection goes down, you have to close and restart the app/openvpn.

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#14 2015-12-29 19:30:30

archingforward
Member
Registered: 2015-12-08
Posts: 12

Re: PIA VPN Linux beta app on Arch

Helpful update. I was thinking it was just me, glad to know it's not... its PIA. Funny, I assumed PIA would be very reliable based on their popularity and reputation. Perhaps it's unrelated but since I swapped from NetworkManager to networkd+wpa_supplicant+resolved things seem to be working more reliably for me. I'm sure it's not related since you've had similar reliability issues with PIA. Still, I like this config better. I selected auto today and it seems to be working well.

I'd like to figure out which server(location) it's connecting to. Perhaps I can script checking the tunnel ip against their openvpn profiles. I'm poking around with it a bit.

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#15 2016-03-06 17:58:35

emacsomancer
Member
Registered: 2014-09-20
Posts: 211

Re: PIA VPN Linux beta app on Arch

Unfortunately after updating Arch today, the PIA VPN Linux beta client no longer works. Not sure why nor how to debug.

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#16 2016-03-08 16:00:20

archingforward
Member
Registered: 2015-12-08
Posts: 12

Re: PIA VPN Linux beta app on Arch

I'm having the same issue.

I'm trying to figure out what's going on. The menu icon runs /home/<username>/.pia_manager/pia_manager/run.sh which runs run.rb however that's encoded with RubyEncoder v2.0. So I can't view the code. It uses it's own ruby binary ruby 1.9.3p484 (2013-11-22 revision 43786) [x86_64-linux] so I'd think that's independent of an arch ruby update.

I may post in their forums too.
https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/f … inux-beta/

If I run from a terminal, I don't get much helpful info. I think those messages appeared previously.

./run.sh
pia_tray: no process found
kill: sending signal to 25537 failed: No such process

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#17 2016-03-08 16:35:45

emacsomancer
Member
Registered: 2014-09-20
Posts: 211

Re: PIA VPN Linux beta app on Arch

I get the same error messages. I dug into the scripts in the ./pia_manager directory and could get the tray icon to show up (by manually running it), but that didn't seem to help.

Currently running via the networkmanager plugin.  I wish PIA would just allow us to connect using stronger encryption directly via openvpn rather than having to use their client.

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