VPN

The Software Heritage server and the VMs running on it are severely firewalled. To get onto their network unrestricted, a VPN based on OpenVPN is available.

The setup is client-server, with per-client certificates.

OpenVPN client configuration

Raw OpenVPN

Sample configuration file, e.g., /etc/openvpn/softwareheritage.conf:

remote louvre.softwareheritage.org
ns-cert-type server 
comp-lzo 
nobind
dev tun
proto udp 
port 1194 
log /var/log/openvpn.log
up-restart 
persist-key 
persist-tun 
client 
ca /etc/openvpn/keys/softwareheritage-ca.crt
cert /etc/openvpn/keys/softwareheritage.crt
key /etc/openvpn/keys/softwareheritage.key
user nobody
group nogroup

# If you are using resolvconf, add this:
# Make sure you add louvre to /etc/hosts to avoid issues in using the vpn-provided DNS server.
script-security 2
up /etc/openvpn/update-resolv-conf
down /etc/openvpn/update-resolv-conf

# If you want the connection to persist when your network fails, add this:
ping-restart 10

In addition to the above configuration file, you will need to install the following 3 files under /etc/openvpn/keys:

• softwareheritage-ca.crt: public certificate for the Software Heritage certification authority (CA)
• softwareheritage.crt: public, client-specific certificate (see below)
• softwareheritage.key: private, client-specific key (see below)

Network Manager GUI

You need network-manager-openvpn and network-manager-openvpn-gnome for the configuration gui.

Obtaining a client certificate

For users

Generate a keypair (key + certificate signing request) using the following command:

{{{ openssl req -new -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout openvpn.key -out openvpn.csr -subj "/CN=<your username>" }}}

Make sure openvpn.key is stored in a safe place (it's your private key, which will allow anyone to connect to the VPN).

Provide the CSR file to a sysadmin.

For admins

On louvre:

root@louvre:~# cd /etc/openvpn/keys
root@louvre:/etc/openvpn/keys# ./easyrsa build-client-full USERNAME nopass

At the end of the process certificate and key will be in /etc/openvpn/keys/pki/issued/USERNAME.crt and /etc/openvpn/keys/pki/private/USERNAME.key. Send them to USERNAME (securely).

Add the DNS entry for the new host to hiera and do a puppet run on pergamon.

Revoking a client certificate

On louvre:

root@louvre:~# cd /etc/openvpn/keys
root@louvre:/etc/openvpn/keys# ./easyrsa revoke USERNAME
[ say yes ]
root@louvre:/etc/openvpn/keys# ./easyrsa gen-crl; chmod a+r pki/crl.pem

OpenVPN re-reads the CRL at each connection (which is why we need the CRL to be world-readable), so once the cert is revoked, there's nothing more to do. If you want to make sure the client is disconnected, you need to restart OpenVPN (which will make all clients reconnect).

/etc/hosts entries

Once the Vpn is setup on your machine, you can access Software Heritage hosts via their private IP addresses; see Network configuration.

OpenVPN now pushes the address of our DNS server (192.168.100.29, pergamon).

You might want to add louvre.softwareheritage.org in your /etc/hosts to avoid a bootstrap problem if the "on-vpn" DNS server is in your resolv.conf.