Tinc

What is tinc

Tinc is an awesome vpn mesh.

How peer to peer setup in tinc

The following tutorial will setup a very simple scenario, where you create a tinc vpn between two computers in the same network. In this scenario heinz will connect to peter. But this will make heinz also visible to peter.

It can easily be improved to a setup with multiple computers involved.

Overview

The following diagram shows the network we want to setup.

                     network : private
+--------------------------+      +--------------------------+
|    name : heinz          |      |    name : peter          |
| real ip : 192.168.178.25 | ---> | real ip : 192.168.178.21 |
| tinc ip : 10.1.1.25/24   |      | tinc ip : 10.1.1.21/24   |
+--------------------------+      +--------------------------+

Generate keys

Tinc clients need to verify themselves to each other, which is done by keys. There are multiple ways to generate your keys. Here is one.

nix-shell -p tinc_pre --run "tinc generate-keys 4096"

The command ask you where to put the keys. If you hit enter a few times it will generate 4 files. (instead of hitting enter you can give it different file path)

• /etc/tinc/rsa_key.priv
• /etc/tinc/rsa_key.pub
• /etc/tinc/ed25519_key.priv
• /etc/tinc/ed25519_key.pub

Create host files

The hostfile can have a lot of parameters (here is an overview).

But these are the minimum needed for our setup

• Address : The real world IP-Address of this machine
• Subnet : The tinc network IP-Address (the one we want to connect to after the tinc network is setup).

Also the host files need to contain the public keys for this host.

So lets create the two hostfiles. Assuming we have generated keys for the 2 machines and they are stored in the folders heinz and peter.

cat >hosts_heinz <<EOF
Address = 192.168.178.25
Subnet  = 10.1.1.25
EOF
cat heinz/rsa_key.pub >> hosts_heinz
cat heinz/ed25519_key.pub >> hosts_heinz

cat >hosts_peter <<EOF
Address = 192.168.178.21
Subnet  = 10.1.1.21
EOF
cat peter/rsa_key.pub >> hosts_heinz
cat peter/ed25519_key.pub >> hosts_heinz

Setup interface

We have to configure the tinc tunnel interface.

networking.interfaces

NOTE: There are changes proposed to nix configuration, for using networkd based configuration instead of the current fragile scripted configuration, that will hopefully make the following section obsolete.

The simplest way is to use the networking module. But it has some minor flaws on package updates.

# for heinz
networking.interfaces."tinc.${networkName}".ipv4.addresses = [ { address = "10.1.1.25"; prefixLength = 24; } ];

Another author has experienced problems with the network failing to restart when using the above to configure interfaces. The following snippet seems to fix that (until perhaps a more proper fix is upstreamed?):

  # Start the unit for adding addresses if Tinc is started
  systemd.services."tinc.${networkName}".wants = [ "network-addresses-tinc.${networkName}.service" ];
  # Stop the unit for adding addresses if Tinc is stopped or restarted
  systemd.services."network-addresses-tinc.${networkName}".partOf = [ "tinc.${networkName}.service" ];
  # Start the unit for adding addresses after the Tinc device is added
  systemd.services."network-addresses-tinc.${networkName}".after = [ "sys-subsystem-net-devices-tinc.${networkName}.device" ];

tinc-up/tinc-down

A more robust but more complicated way to configure the interfaces are the tinc-up and tinc-down scripts.

First we have to create the scripts:

# for heinz
environment.etc = {
    "tinc/private/tinc-up".source = pkgs.writeScript "tinc-up-private" ''
        #!${pkgs.stdenv.shell}
        ${pkgs.nettools}/bin/ifconfig $INTERFACE 10.1.1.25 netmask 255.255.255.0
    '';
    "tinc/private/tinc-down".source = pkgs.writeScript "tinc-down-private" ''
        #!${pkgs.stdenv.shell}
        /run/wrappers/bin/sudo ${pkgs.nettools}/bin/ifconfig $INTERFACE down
    '';
};

For the tinc-down we need to use sudo, because the user tinc.private who starts the service is not able to tear down the interface.

So we have to make sure this user can call sudo without entering a password.

 security.sudo.extraRules = [
    {
      users    = [ "tinc.private" ];
      commands = [
        {
          command  = "${pkgs.nettools}/bin/ifconfig";
          options  = [ "NOPASSWD" ];
        }
      ];
    }
  ];

Open the Firewall

The computer which you connect to needs to open some ports.

networking.firewall.allowedUDPPorts = [ 655 ];
networking.firewall.allowedTCPPorts = [ 655 ];

use service.tinc module

Now we have everything we need to configure the services.tinc module in our configuration.nix file on both machines.

You can recognise that the services.tinc."${myMeshName}".hosts have the same content on both machines.

It is also important that you set services.tinc."${myMeshName}".name to a machine that is contained in the services.tinc."${myMeshName}".hosts.

/etc/nixos/tinc.nix on heinz

{ config, pkgs, ... }:

let

  myMeshIp   = "10.1.1.25";
  myMeshMask = "255.255.255.0";
  myMeshName = "private";

in {

  # simple interface setup
  # ----------------------
  networking.interfaces."tinc.${myMeshName}" = [ { address = myMeshIp; } ];


  # configure tinc service
  # ----------------------
  services.tinc.networks."${myMeshName}"= {

    name          = "heinz";      # who are we in this network.

    debugLevel    = 3;            # the debug level for journal -u tinc.private
    chroot        = false;        # otherwise addresses can't be a DNS
    interfaceType = "tap";        # tun might also work.

    extraConfig   = ''
      # connect to peter
      # ----------------
      # check AutoConnect as alternative option.
      ConnectTo  = peter

      # Keys
      # ----
      # if you don't set the path as string, it will import the file in
      # in the nix/store where everybody can read it.
      Ed25519PrivateKeyFile = "/root/secrets/heinz/ed25519_key.priv"
      PrivateKeyFile        = "/root/secrets/heinz/rsa_key.priv"
    '';
    hosts = {
      # content of hosts_heinz (from above)
      heinz = ''
        Address = 192.168.178.25
        Subnet  = 10.1.1.25

        Ed25519PublicKey = asdf ...
        -----BEGIN RSA PUBLIC KEY-----
        bla blub ...
        -----END RSA PUBLIC KEY-----
        '';
      # content of hosts_peter (from above)
      peter = ''
        Address = 192.168.178.21
        Subnet  = 10.1.1.21

        Ed25519PublicKey = asdf ...
        -----BEGIN RSA PUBLIC KEY-----
        bla blub ...
        -----END RSA PUBLIC KEY-----
      '';
    };
  };
}

/etc/nixos/tinc.nix on peter

{ config, pkgs, ... }:

let

  myMeshIp   = "10.1.1.21";
  myMeshMask = "255.255.255.0";
  myMeshName = "private";

in {

  # open tinc ports
  # ---------------
  networking.firewall.allowedTCPPorts = [ 655 ];
  networking.firewall.allowedUDPPorts = [ 655 ];

  # simple interface setup
  # ----------------------
  networking.interfaces."tinc.${myMeshName}" = [ { address = myMeshIp; } ];


  # configure tinc service
  # ----------------------
  services.tinc.networks."${myMeshName}"= {

    name          = "peter";      # who are we in this network.

    debugLevel    = 3;            # the debug level for journal -u tinc.private
    chroot        = false;        # otherwise addresses can't be a DNS
    interfaceType = "tap";        # tun might also work.

    extraConfig   = ''
      # Keys
      # ----
      # if you don't set the path as string, it will import the file in
      # in the nix/store where everybody can read it.
      Ed25519PrivateKeyFile = "/root/secrets/peter/ed25519_key.priv"
      PrivateKeyFile        = "/root/secrets/peter/rsa_key.priv"
    '';
    hosts = {
      # content of hosts_heinz (from above)
      heinz = ''
        Address = 192.168.178.25
        Subnet  = 10.1.1.25

        Ed25519PublicKey = asdf ...
        -----BEGIN RSA PUBLIC KEY-----
        bla blub ...
        -----END RSA PUBLIC KEY-----
        '';
      # content of hosts_peter (from above)
      peter = ''
        Address = 192.168.178.21
        Subnet  = 10.1.1.21

        Ed25519PublicKey = asdf ...
        -----BEGIN RSA PUBLIC KEY-----
        bla blub ...
        -----END RSA PUBLIC KEY-----
      '';
    };
  };
}