XPUB HUB New Nodes

From XPUB & Lens-Based wiki

Adding a node to the XPUB HUB

New nodes (machines) can be edited to the HUB Tinc network.

To add a node to the HUB, you will need to:

  • 0. Determine IP address of a new server (see below)
  • 1. Install Tinc and invite it to the XPUB hub (see below)
  • 2. Enable HTTP to Tinc node

You can install the server on the HUB in two ways:

  1. without direct SSH access (SSH access possible through local network or by adding your computer to the HUB)
  2. with direct SSH access (user account on XVM needed)

Install Tinc

See instructions at Tinc page.


Add new tinc Node to HUB network (2022 -- no ssh keys or jump user)

Add yourself to the HUB list

Add your chosen Node name and IP to HUB#IP_allocation.

Student project IPs last number should have 3 digits, last one is Tisa's 10.0.1.112, so you can start from there.

Invite the new node to the HUB network (staff)

In the XVM (xpub server)

As root:

create an invitation node the node as described in HUB#Adding_a_new_thing 

tinc -n hub invite $NAMEOFNODE

Which will generate an invitation address

Accept Tinc invitiation link

Back In the Pi

User invitation to join the network ($INVITE_ADDRES) 

sudo tinc join $INVITE_ADDRES

Add the pi to the hub network under the chosen Node IP ($NODE.IP.ADDRS): 

sudo tinc -n hub add subnet $NODE.IP.ADDRS

edit the tinc-up file in /usr/local/etc/tinc/hub/tinc-up

  • comment out the echo line
  • add the line ifconfig $INTERFACE $NODE.IP.ADDRS netmask 255.255.255.0
Note: $INTERFACE should remain as is; $NODE.IP.ADDRS should be replace with the Node IP
  • Example tinc-up file:
#!/bin/sh
# echo 'Unconfigured tinc-up script, please edit '$0'!'
ifconfig $INTERFACE 10.0.0.105 netmask 255.255.255.0

ifconfig

FOR DEBIAN You may need to install ifconfig 

   apt install net-tools

Test if Tinc works

Start th tincd daemon 

sudo tincd -n hub -D -d3

In a new terminal window, ssh again to the pi and see if you can ping other tinc nodes: 

ping 10.0.0.1

If so Tinc is running :) yahh

Run Tinc as a service

To do this, we will make a tincd service file.

According to tinc documentation...

Tinc ships with systemd service files that allow you to start and stop tinc using systemd. There are two service files:

  • tinc.service is used to globally enable or disable all tinc daemons managed by systemd
  • tinc@netname.service is used to enable or disable specific tinc daemons.

These are located in the source directory, in the sub-directory systemd/

However this files, seem to give some issues, as metioned in the tinc github: issue 133, issue 168

Hence we'll us the ones bellow that so far have worked fine.

/etc/systemd/system/tinc.service 

# This is a mostly empty service, but allows commands like stop, start, reload
# to propagate to all tinc@ service instances.

[Unit]
Description=Tinc VPN
Documentation=info:tinc
Documentation=man:tinc(8) man:tinc.conf(5)
Documentation=http://tinc-vpn.org/docs/
After=network.target
Wants=network.target

[Service]
Type=oneshot
RemainAfterExit=yes
ExecStart=/usr/local/sbin/true
ExecReload= /usr/local/sbin/true
WorkingDirectory=/usr/local/etc/tinc

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target


/etc/systemd/system/tinc@.service 

[Unit]
Description=Tinc net %i
Documentation=info:tinc
Documentation=man:tinc(8) man:tinc.conf(5)
Documentation=http://tinc-vpn.org/docs/
PartOf=tinc.service
ReloadPropagatedFrom=tinc.service

[Service]
Type=simple
WorkingDirectory=/usr/local/etc/tinc/%i
ExecStart=/usr/local/sbin/tincd -n %i -D
ExecReload=/usr/local/sbin/tincd -n %i -kHUP
TimeoutStopSec=5
Restart=always
RestartSec=60

[Install]
WantedBy=tinc.service

Note: in my system tinc was installed inside /usr/local/bin/tinc, /usr/local/bin/tincd and its configuration is in /usr/local/etc/tinc. But this is system specific. Ensure you know where these directories are in your system.

  • Enable
    • sudo systemctl enable tinc
    • sudo systemctl enable tinc@hub
  • Start sudo systemctl start tinc@hub
  • Check status sudo systemctl status tinc@hub

Note that because tinc@testvpn.service requests tinc.service we don’t need to start that one, as it is started by tinc@testvpn.service

If all is good. We can test by rebooting the system and seeing that if after a while tinc@testvpn is up. You can check that by keeping starting a by pinging the ping 10.1.0.2 and checking the status of tinc@hubsudo systemctl status tinc@hub.

Add new tinc Node to HUB network (with ssh key)

User & SSH key

In your Pi: create a user with the same username as in the sandbox. Keeping it the same as in the sandbox will make things easier for us and gnd.

Add your public ssh key (from your own computer) to your account the Pi (same as mentioned) to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys. On some systems, there is a script (already installed) to do this, called ssh-copy-id: 

ssh-copy-id username@local.pi.IP.addr

Otherwise, the following attempts to do the same (basically you are just adding the contents of your public key as a new line to the file authorized_keys on the pi: 

cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub | ssh local.pi.IP.addr "cat >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys"

Disable SSH to your pi with password (allow ssh key only), by:

  • ensuring you laptops ssh public key is in your pi ~/.ssh/authorized_keys:
cat  ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
  • ensuring you can login to the Pi with ssh key:
ssh username@pi.ip.add -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa
  • edit /etc/ssh/sshd_config:
sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config
  • and uncomment the line:
#PasswordAuthentication no

to: 

PasswordAuthentication no
  • reload ssh:
sudo systemctl reload ssh

You end up with the following info: 

username: nameoftheuser
Node IP: 10.0.0.???
Node name: nameofnode 
ssh public key:
ssh-ed25519 ... ... nameoftheuser@laptop

Add yourself to the HUB list

Add your chosen Node name and IP to HUB#IP_allocation.

Student project IPs last number should have 3 digits, last one is Tisa's 10.0.1.112, so you can start from there.

Invite the new node to the HUB network (staff)

In the XVM (xpub server)

As root:

create an invitation node the node as described in HUB#Adding_a_new_thing 

tinc -n hub invite $NAMEOFNODE

Which will generate an invitation address

Accept Tinc invitiation link

Back In the Pi

User invitation to join the network ($INVITE_ADDRES) 

sudo tinc join $INVITE_ADDRES

Add the pi to the hub network under the chosen Node IP ($NODE.IP.ADDRS): 

sudo tinc -n hub add subnet $NODE.IP.ADDRS

edit the tinc-up file in /usr/local/etc/tinc/hub/tinc-up

  • comment out the echo line
  • add the line ifconfig $INTERFACE $NODE.IP.ADDRS netmask 255.255.255.0
Note: $INTERFACE should remain as is; $NODE.IP.ADDRS should be replace with the Node IP
  • Example tinc-up file:
#!/bin/sh
# echo 'Unconfigured tinc-up script, please edit '$0'!'
ifconfig $INTERFACE 10.0.0.105 netmask 255.255.255.0

ifconfig

FOR DEBIAN You may need to install ifconfig 

   apt install net-tools

Test if Tinc works

Start th tincd daemon 

sudo tincd -n hub -D -d3

In a new terminal window, ssh again to the pi and see if you can ping other tinc nodes: 

ping 10.0.0.1

If so Tinc is running :) yahh

Run Tinc as a service

To do this, we will make a tincd service file.

According to tinc documentation...

Tinc ships with systemd service files that allow you to start and stop tinc using systemd. There are two service files:

  • tinc.service is used to globally enable or disable all tinc daemons managed by systemd
  • tinc@netname.service is used to enable or disable specific tinc daemons.

These are located in the source directory, in the sub-directory systemd/

However this files, seem to give some issues, as metioned in the tinc github: issue 133, issue 168

Hence we'll us the ones bellow that so far have worked fine.

/etc/systemd/system/tinc.service 

# This is a mostly empty service, but allows commands like stop, start, reload
# to propagate to all tinc@ service instances.

[Unit]
Description=Tinc VPN
Documentation=info:tinc
Documentation=man:tinc(8) man:tinc.conf(5)
Documentation=http://tinc-vpn.org/docs/
After=network.target
Wants=network.target

[Service]
Type=oneshot
RemainAfterExit=yes
ExecStart=/usr/local/sbin/true
ExecReload= /usr/local/sbin/true
WorkingDirectory=/usr/local/etc/tinc

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

/etc/systemd/system/tinc@hub.service 

[Unit]
Description=Tinc net %i
Documentation=info:tinc
Documentation=man:tinc(8) man:tinc.conf(5)
Documentation=http://tinc-vpn.org/docs/
PartOf=tinc.service
ReloadPropagatedFrom=tinc.service

[Service]
Type=simple
WorkingDirectory=/usr/local/etc/tinc/%i
ExecStart=/usr/local/sbin/tincd -n %i -D
ExecReload=/usr/local/sbin/tincd -n %i -kHUP
TimeoutStopSec=5
Restart=always
RestartSec=60

[Install]
WantedBy=tinc.service

Note: in my system tinc was installed inside /usr/local/bin/tinc, /usr/local/bin/tincd and its configuration is in /usr/local/etc/tinc. But this is system specific. Ensure you know where these directories are in your system.

  • Enable
    • sudo systemctl enable tinc
    • sudo systemctl enable tinc@hub
  • Start sudo systemctl start tinc@hub
  • Check status sudo systemctl status tinc@hub

Note that because tinc@testvpn.service requests tinc.service we don’t need to start that one, as it is started by tinc@testvpn.service

If all is good. We can test by rebooting the system and seeing that if after a while tinc@testvpn is up. You can check that by keeping starting a by pinging the ping 10.1.0.2 and checking the status of tinc@hubsudo systemctl status tinc@hub.

SSH to your node

Add a new entry to your laptop ~/.ssh/config by following this template 

Host hub.PI_NAME 
User yourname
Hostname  10.0.0.10?
ProxyJump yourname@xpub.nl:2501
Identityfile ~/.ssh/id_rsa
Serveraliveinterval 30

Note: ls ~/.ssh to know what is filename for the Identityfile (private ssh key)

Enable to ssh jump to RPI on XVM (staff)

XPUB Staff on XVM: use jumpuser script to enable to ssh jump to RPI.

If user's username and its ssh publickey is XVM's /home/ 

jumpuser add_ip username 10.0.0.XYZ

If not, also add the user with 

jumpuser create <USERNAME> <PI-INTERNAL_IP> <USER-PUBKEY> [COMMENT]

log you changes with: 

rtlg

Enable HTTP to tinc node (staff)

To make the https://hub.xpub.nl/NEWNODE url work. 

Note: The pi needs to run a webserver, otherwise there is nothing to see :).

XPUB Staff on XVM will need to as root:

  • edit /etc/nginx/sites-available/hub.xpub.nl
  • adding to it a new location to the hub.xpub.nl server block
        location /nodename {
                proxy_pass http://tinc.node.ip.addr/;
                client_max_body_size 200M;
        }
  • test the configuration
nginx -t
  • if all good restart nginx
systemctl restart nginx
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