[Feature Request] - Remote SSH ability

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5teve asked Jun 22, '21

[Feature Request] - Remote SSH ability

Hi Guys

For those of us running Venus OS devices on board boats and in remote locations that are not manned, it strikes me that a key missing part of the maintenance of these devices is SSH remotely. For those of us not blessed with a clever brain, I cant seem to find a way of accessing my PI via an LTE (4g) connection that resides on the boat due to CGnat. The LTE router that I have only does OPENVPN server, not client (which is useless behind CGnat) so unless i'm on the boat with the laptop I have no access.

Now the like of Freenas have a built in 'terminal' or Shell.. It strikes me that would be a mightily useful thing to include in either the remote console (via VRM) or via VRM itself? It would certainly make life a little easier for doing the things that require SSH..

I know I could just get a router that supports a VPN client, hook it up to my home VPN server and access that way.. but it just seems like a nice touch having remote SSH...

I'm sure being a heathen.. I am ignoring security concerns and a million other things.. but I live in a simplistic bubble.. my brain hurts less that way ;O)

Steve

Venus OS remote console

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Kevin Windrem commented · Mar 30 at 05:54 PM

I just released a beta version of a wrapper to install and setup tailscale on GX devices:

https://github.com/kwindrem/TailscaleGX

The ReadMe.md hopefully provides all that you need to know. Including how to add the package to Package manager so you can install it from the main GUI (gui-v1).

Please have a look but ONLY if you have local ssh access to uninstall the package should something go wrong.

Please post comments and bug reports to the issues section of the GitHub repo.

@mvader (Victron Energy) I would appreciate your feedback too.

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Kevin Windrem commented · Apr 06 at 05:48 PM

Following on the work by @mvader (Victron Energy) I have released TailscaleGX, a wrapper for tailscale (described in another answer here).

TailscaleGX includes a menu for controlling tailscale and provides the necessary status in order to add he GX device to your tailscale account and establish a connection.

https://github.com/kwindrem/TailscaleGX

TailscaleGX is a SetupHelper package and can be added from Inactive packages / new:

Package name: TailscaleGX

GitHub user: kwindrem

GitHub branch or tag: latest

You also need to set up a tailscale account at tailscale.com.

The ReadMe will hopefully provide enough information to set up a connection.

tailscale provides ssh and http access, and probably many more I haven't tested.

Please post comments, questions, bugs to the issues section of TailscaleGX repo.

Thanks, enjoy

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dutchsolarfreak Kevin Windrem commented · May 04 at 11:17 AM

Working VERY well. Thanks!!

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mvader (Victron Energy) answered · Feb 16 at 02:48 PM

Hey @XZv I looked into that a bit further, and tailscale looks like the best solution.

Here is why:

to make all of it work well, also when installed behind various types of firewalls, then you need some cloud hosted service / server. Where all devices connect to and where the user can connect to as well.

And security is critical.

To host & offer such service for free, support it, maintain it, have it pentested and so forth by ourselves is a step to far.

The other route, totally open source / developer would be a rc.Local script that enables Wireguard on GX device + a (dockerised?) server that is the pivot. Nice but nerdy and complex.

Enter tailscale. All of it done and they offer a free service.

So, hereby the invitation to you and the rest of Community: can someone work on a script to get tailscale up and running on a GX device + instructions?

And in the interim do it with a one time self compiled tailscale binary - use our SDK to do that. Should be pretty simple.

If that works well, one of our guys can take care of having the binary included as a standard plus having it as enableable daemon which is watched over by Daemontools like all other services on the GX.

And the configuration/provisioning will need to be solved. If all that is needed is some long key, then perhaps gui-v2 allows cut & paste so solves that problem as well.

Note to myself for when including this into the normal Venus OS builds: https://github.com/ChristophHandschuh/meta-tailscale/

And wrt the other solutions:

- wireguard is a protocol; with implementations; tailscale is built in top of that

- zerotier is closed source solution (so I prefer wireguard, but in the end its jusr a choice

- setting up port forwarding, or having to setup and maintain anything at all, is too complex for most of intended user group.

- ngrok is an alternative solution; tailscale seems to be the more popular one after reading around a bit.

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xzv commented · Feb 16 at 07:03 PM

Thanks @mvader (Victron Energy) for the investigation and your thoughts. Today I spent half a day on comparing different solutions and approaches as well. I totally agree, Tailscale looks like the most promising solution right now when the priorities are security, ease of commissioning and reliability.

I expect to have a large fleet of devices that I can access for maintenance remotely once in a while via SSH, so I would highly value a package that will always ship with Venus OS and just needs some initial "machine key" to join your Tailscale network.

I will do some initial tests and report back. Would be good if you or your team could comment on the feasibility of integration into Venus and the GUI then.

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mvader (Victron Energy) ♦♦ xzv commented · Feb 16 at 09:48 PM

Ok I couldn't help myself, and had a play :)

Here is more or less what I did:

1. Go to tailscale.com and create an account; and installed it somewhere. Either on my computer or iphone or both.

2 Logged on on a GX device, downloaded the latest linux binary for arm https://pkgs.tailscale.com/stable/tailscale_1.60.0_arm.tgz

3. Un tarred the two files and put them in /data/tailscale/

4. Created a run-tailscale file, /data/tailscale/run-tailscale, with these contents:

#!/bin/sh

# Start tailscale daemon and use a dir on data partition
# to keep state (certificates and such). tailscaled will auto-
# create that dir if it doesn't exist.
#
# Logs are written to /var/lib/tailscale, which -on Venus OS-
# is volatile.
#
# To see further commandline options for the daemon, run
#
#     tailscaled -?
#
# I didn't find any docs for its options.

/data/tailscale/tailscaled -no-logs-no-support -statedir /data/tailscale/stat

4. Added the /data/rc.local file, that starts above, with these contents:

#!/bin/sh

/data/tailscale/run-tailscale

5. made both files executable

6. rebooted the GX, and checked that it runs:

root@einstein:~# uptime
 21:32:07 up 1 min,  load average: 2.82, 1.43, 0.54
root@einstein:~# ps | grep tailscale
 1187 root      2952 S    {run-tailscale} /bin/sh /data/tailscale/run-tailscal
 1189 root      541m S    /data/tailscale/tailscaled -no-logs-no-support -stat
 1933 root      2688 S    grep tailscale

7. started up tailscale for the first time, triggers this autoconf:

8. copied and pasted that url into a browser, logged in. It then simply says success and goes back to commandline. Quite nice how they did that! Logging in on that URL auto-provisions that device with proper keys and everything.

9. rebooted the GX again, to see if and how it initialised:

root@einstein:~# /data/tailscale/tailscale status
100.89.189.104  einstein-2           matthijsvader@ linux   -
100.111.71.54   mva-ubuntu2204       matthijsvader@ linux   -

# Health check:
#     - dns-os: writing to "/etc/resolv.pre-tailscale-backup.conf" in rename of "/etc/resolv.conf": open /etc/resolv.pre-tailscale-backup.conf: read-only file system
#     - router: setting up nat/ts-postrouting: running [/usr/sbin/iptables -t nat -N ts-postrouting --wait]: exit status 3: iptables v1.8.4 (legacy): can't initialize iptables table `nat': Table does not exist (do you need to insmod?)
Perhaps iptables or your kernel needs to be upgraded.

root@einstein:~#

10: so that worked nicely, that GX is now connected to my tailscale network, and the connection will survive firmware updates and reboots; until ofcourse something changes that makes the binary incompatible with Venus OS.

Next steps would be:

1. add including tailscale into Venus OS builds, and look into tailscale lite: https://tailscale.com/kb/1207/small-tailscale

2. Catch that login url, and show it in the gui somewhere, extra nice is as a QR code, so users can open it to login that device easily.

3. Document the whole thing.

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Answer 1 · 2021-06-22T12:43:11Z

mvader (Victron Energy) answered · Jun 22, 2021 at 12:43 PM

Hi, one available solution is zero tier:

https://community.victronenergy.com/questions/81273/remote-access-to-venusos-zerotier-one-installation.html

I will need some self compiling and such. It shouldn't take you more than a few hours of work.

And, for sure it would be great to have a solution natively in Venus OS; but its not something we'll be focussing on anytime soon I'm afraid.

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Answer 2 · 2021-06-22T16:09:43Z

Warwick Bruce Chapman answered · Jun 22, 2021 at 04:09 PM

Put a Mikrotik router in-front of the GX-device and use one of its tunnelling features. I setup a Wireguard server on a Hetzner cloud container that cost a couple Euro and tunnel from the Mikrotik to that server. I can then port forward the Mikrotik to the GX-device and SSH to the GX-device from the cloud container.

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Warwick Bruce Chapman commented · Jun 22, 2021 at 04:23 PM

Actually, something like this looks nicer using Zerotier and a Raspberry Pi: https://iamkelv.in/blog/2017/06/zerotier.html

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nebulight commented · Jan 07, 2022 at 07:17 PM

Mikrotik now natively supports ZeroTier right in their router OS 7. It's so easy to get up an running, it's amazing that it's free (for personal use). Zero firewall rules needed.

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Answer 3 · 2021-06-22T16:37:31Z

Kevin Windrem answered · Jun 22, 2021 at 04:37 PM

A huge security hole, but you can forward port 22 to your Venus device to allow SSH from the outside world.

The VPN solution is much more secure and the one I'd recommend.

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gone-sailing commented · Jun 05, 2023 at 06:21 AM

The issue here is CGNAT, your router’s IP address is not addressable from the internet behind CGNAT. VPN is the only solution. Unfortunately I have to deal with CGNAT on the boat and at home.

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mvader (Victron Energy) ♦♦ gone-sailing commented · Jun 05, 2023 at 07:37 AM

have you looked at this?

https://community.victronenergy.com/questions/81273/remote-access-to-venusos-zerotier-one-installation.html

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Answer 4 · 2023-06-01T23:05:55Z

mvader (Victron Energy) answered · Jun 01, 2023 at 11:05 PM

This looks like a really promising solution to me /

https://community.victronenergy.com/questions/205323/venus-os-ngrok.html

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iv4n commented · Jun 06, 2023 at 05:20 PM

Pretty good indeed! I still hope that one day Victron adds the package wireguard-tools so we can setup wireguard on the gx device.

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iv4n iv4n commented · Jun 07, 2023 at 05:45 PM

I was able to compile it from source! I will post these as an reply on the main thread.

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mvader (Victron Energy) ♦♦ iv4n commented · Feb 16 at 03:12 PM

- Per Venus OS v3.10 (or something) wireguard kernel module is included.

- Per Venus OS v3.20, wireguard tools are standard in our online repository of installable packages, and installable with opkg

And for anyone looking for the most simple solution, see Tailscale. I’m hoping for some volunteers to help document and do the leg work for that; perhaps start with simple venus-data-tailscale.tgz package.

See also further down below.

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Answer 5 · 2023-06-05T15:01:56Z

pau1phi11ips answered · Jun 05, 2023 at 03:01 PM

Another option: I have a Teltonika 4G router in front of the Cerbo. You can tunnel SSH through their remote management (RMS) portal very easy.

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Answer 6 · 2023-06-07T17:46:10Z

iv4n answered · Jun 07, 2023 at 05:46 PM

This is another solution, using Wireguard as a VPN.

I just put together this quick guide:

https://community.victronenergy.com/articles/211164/howto-venus-os-setting-up-wireguard.html

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Answer 7 · 2024-02-16T10:43:10Z

xzv answered · Feb 16 at 10:43 AM

@mvader (Victron Energy) Any chance to put a Victron SSH port forwarding onto the midterm roadmap? Like the one you already have for your R&D for customers and can be enabled with the "Remote support" switch? That would be a great benefit and service for many. Thanks!

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mvader (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented · May 04 at 06:48 AM

Hey @XZv , the best solution for remote ssh access that I’ve seen is Tailscale.

See my posts above for how it works / how to get it working; and Kevin has prepared an installer for it.

Perhaps someday we’ll make it more natively installable/configurable.

I recommend to try out what there already is - it works great!

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dutchsolarfreak mvader (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented · May 04 at 11:19 AM

Search for the tailscaleGX package made by kwindrem.

Works like a charm and low CPU load on the CerboGX

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Answer 8 · 2024-02-21T16:07:03Z

Kees Oomen answered · Feb 21 at 04:07 PM

Wow, keep on the good work to support Tailscale as embedded in VenusOS soon! Will definitely following this topic to see the progress.

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Answer 9 · 2024-03-30T22:54:39Z

Randy Goodman answered · Mar 30 at 10:54 PM

to me this is a BIG feature for customers. I would use this all the time in my development and deploy\troubleshooting. When can we have it?

i am not a net guru and dont follow all being said above and on the threads linked to, so, the idea of a customer just needing to run a script is perfect! make sure you include windows as one of the customer platforms. THX!

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Kevin Windrem commented · Mar 30 at 11:39 PM

See my post from earlier today. TailscaleGX is a SetupHelper package that adds access through tailscale as discussed a while back and tested by mvader.

It's currently in beta (along with a beta of SetupHelper). I'll be releasing both after some test time

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Answer 10 · 2024-05-02T16:14:20Z

iv4n answered · May 02 at 04:14 PM

@mvader (Victron Energy) Just came in to check this post and went to review the script I contributed for installing wireguard in Venus OS and it no longer exists. It says to contact the administrator if I believe it's a mistake: https://community.victronenergy.com/articles/211164/howto-venus-os-setting-up-wireguard.html

Would you know why was that post deleted? I find it sad that it would be deleted without any notice and also quite discouraging to contribute further things after putting effort and time putting the script and the post together for the community.

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mvader (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented · May 04 at 06:43 AM

Hi @Iv4n , as far as I can see it is not deleted:

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iv4n mvader (Victron Energy) ♦♦ commented · May 04 at 06:31 PM

I ended up sending a message to the community manager, seems like it got restored!

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[Feature Request] - Remote SSH ability

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[Feature Request] - Remote SSH ability

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