I have the utmost respect and appreciation for mullvad but I don't need a vpn without port forwarding so I cancelled my sub. They are still objectively the vest vpn, this is the only sticking point.
this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
320 points (99.1% liked)
Selfhosted
40041 readers
873 users here now
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
Rules:
-
Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
-
No spam posting.
-
Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.
-
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.
-
Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).
-
No trolling.
Resources:
- selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
- awesome-selfhosted software
- awesome-sysadmin resources
- Self-Hosted Podcast from Jupiter Broadcasting
Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.
Questions? DM the mods!
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Did they change something? I've been port forwarding for a couple of years now.
They removed port forwarding back in July
https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/5/29/removing-the-support-for-forwarded-ports/
I think it was something todo with CSAM hosting. It's shit but understandable to why they removed it
https://mullvad.net/en/blog/2023/5/2/update-the-swedish-authorities-answered-our-protocol-request/
Well. That's what I get for using a service without giving them my email and not checking their blog.
What does port forwarding gain you on a VPN? Sorry if the question is ignorant
You need it for file sharing apps like BitTorrent or Soulseek, if you don't want to be seen as a leech, and/or you want to use private trackers where you need to maintain a good ratio. :)
Then you can just use a seed box on top of your downloading
Why would you use a seedbox if you have a home server? The home server can be the seedbox. A lot of homelabbers would have a good enough connection for it.
Edit: Using a VPN with port forwarding, of course.
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| CSAM | Child Sexual Abuse Material |
| DNS | Domain Name Service/System |
| IP | Internet Protocol |
| NAS | Network-Attached Storage |
| Plex | Brand of media server package |
| SSH | Secure Shell for remote terminal access |
| VPN | Virtual Private Network |
| VPS | Virtual Private Server (opposed to shared hosting) |
8 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 11 acronyms.
[Thread #116 for this sub, first seen 7th Sep 2023, 21:05] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
Good bot
Well that's awesome news.
Wow this is great. I've been having trouble getting exit nodes working properly with these two. Sad that mullvad dropped port forwarding though so I'm not sure if I'll stay with them.
Yeah I swapped over to ProtonVPN after they dropped support for port forwarding. Shame really because I did really enjoy Mullvad's VPN service.
Does the port forwarding works on Linux CLI? Last time I checked it was only through their GUI app
Yeah the Proton VPN gui app for Linux does not include port forwarding. I believe only their Windows app does at the moment. However, if you use their Wireguard certs and then follow their port forwarding instructions, it works quite well. Make sure you either disable IPv6 on your system or set IPv6 to link-local and add ::/0 to AllowedIPs, otherwise your IPv6 will leak since ProtonVPN does not support IPv6 at the moment.
Do people use Tailscale to be able to access local things on their network like Plex media servers when they’re not home? Tailscale looks interesting but I haven’t found a usecase where it would benefit me
Yes, exactly that.
I use it to SSH into my devices all the time.
I don't really use it for this, but here are some things I do use it for:
- metrics scraping on servers without needing to open ports or worry about ssl encryption. Works great for federating Prometheus instances or scraping exporters
- secure access to machines not directly exposed to the internet. I.e. ssh access to my home box while I'm traveling
- being an exit node for web traffic while traveling. I.e. maybe you are traveling and have a bank who is giving you grief about logging in -- masquerade that connection from your home IP
I mostly just use it for metrics scraping though
Plex probably isn't the best example, but yes, you can use Tailscale to create a sort of mesh network to access devices within private networks. Essentially any device that's connected to tailscale can be contacted by other clients connected to tailscale. There are extra routing things you can do to use a tailscale device as a sort of "exit node", but that's the basic gist.
Not Plex, but yes. I use it with Microsoft Remote Desktop if I need to access a work-related computer that I keep at home while traveling.
I also use it for the more typical use case of a cloud server that I can ssh into even though it exposes zero ports publicly.
It's accessing literally anything you self host from home, with minimal latency and without any port forwarding on your router or exposing your services to the Internet.
It's primary benefit is how fast it is, how much easier it is to set up for even the most novice of users, and how ubiquitous all the clients are.
Plus it's free for 100 endpoints, which is far more than most individuals will need for home labs. And even that you can get around by using subnet routing.
If you've ever wanted to run your own sort of Dropbox or Google docs (Syncthing/Next cloud) but didn't want to deal with the security hassle of exposing it to the Internet, this removes that completely. No more struggling with open ports, fail2ban, or messing with reverse proxies.
That’s super convenient
I use it to reach all of my services when I go out.
I’ve audiobooks, RSS, music, and cloud.
Well hot damn this is pretty awesome
Yeah, sorry, still turning elsewhere since port forwarding a no go.
If anyone wants to achieve something similar without using Tailscale or with alternative VPN providers, the setup outlined in this LSIO guide is pretty neat: https://www.linuxserver.io/blog/advanced-wireguard-container-routing
Edit: Don't be intimidated by the word "advanced". I struggled with this a bit at first (was also adapting it to use at home instead of on a VPS that's tunneling to home) but I got it working eventually and learned a lot in the process. Willing to assist folks who want to set it up.
As an aside, I wish technical documents like this would stop saying "Wireguard client" and "Wireguard server". Wireguard doesn't have clients and servers - everyone is a peer, and whether you can route through the peer or not is just based on the routing table and nftables/iptables rules.
You can also achieve this with any VPN by using two Docker containers:
- Gluetun: https://github.com/qdm12/gluetun
- Tailscale: https://tailscale.com/kb/1282/docker/
Set Gluetun up to connect to your VPN (they support a huge number of providers) and then set the Tailscale container to use the Gluetun's network. Then, use that Tailscale container as your exit node.
You can also combine this with a self-hosted Headscale (https://github.com/juanfont/headscale) instance.
The issue with Tailscale is that in phone it uses the VPN and you are not able to a vpn or a Adblock service like Adguard. But now I believe it will be interesting to have a exit node with Mullvad vpn to block all shit on all devices inside the tailscale nerwork . Another good thing of tailscale it makes services like jellyfin, plex and syncthing easier.
I use tailscale with next dns, it works great. I don't use magic DNS, however, but it's a trade off I'm okay with for the benefit of blocking at the edge
Sound interesting. Can you tell me how do you configure it and if you did it in both android and iOS? Thank you
I'm not the guy you asked but I do the same thing. In the tailscale dashboard you can set up a default DNS for every device that is connected to your tailnet. They support nextdns and a couple other things. I have mine pointed to my personal adgaurd home server that is within my tailnet and it works great. I used nextdns for a while but didn't want to pay for it. It also worked great with tailscale.
Thank you!
https://tailscale.com/kb/1218/nextdns/
Easy to set up, mine is working great.
Yeah found the guide after looking around . Ty
I'm glad these two great companies found their way together, love to see it!
I always wanted this mesh feature in mullvad. But how this works with privacy? I mean, does the combination with a user loged service like tailscale diminish the privacy of anonymous mullvad accounts?
I think it's diminished, yes. Regardless of whatever PR spin they might pull, I don't think there's any way around it.
fwiw I've been using cloudflare tunnels with mullvad for almost a year and never had problems accessing my stuff.
Could somebody help me out? I setup Tailscale on my media server box, trying to use it alongside Windscribe has basically bricked ssh on the box. With this news, am I to understand that Tailscale will not work with any vpn other than mullvad?
I just it with protonVPN on Linux with no issue.
I don't know about exit node on Tailscale because I don't use it but the rest is working absolutely fine.
In Tailscale you can set up an exit node which lets you access the entire internet via its internet connection.
You could set up an exit node that would let you access the internet via some (anonymizing) VPN providers like Mullvad or any other.
This sounds like Tailscale is simply setting up this exit node for Mullvad on their side and providing it as a service. So it's not like using another VPN anonymizers is impossible, it's just convenient to use Mullvad.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Only available in a few countries, not in Latin America. It is not mentioned anywhere.