Using Wireguard

wireguard is a modern, secure and fast vpn tunnel that is extremely simple to setup and works already nearly everywhere.

Since I spent a little bet to play with it because this looked quite interesting, I thought of writing a small tutorial.

I normally use Gentoo (and macos) so this guide is about Gentoo.

General concepts

Wireguard sets up peers identified by an public key and manages a virtual network interface and the routing across them (optionally).

The server is just a peer that knows about loots of peers while a client knows how to directly reach the server and that’s it.

Setting up in Gentoo

Wireguard on Linux is implemented as a kernel module.

So in general you have to build the module and the userspace tools (wg).
If you want to have some advanced feature make sure that your kernel has the following settings:

IP_ADVANCED_ROUTER
IP_MULTIPLE_TABLES
NETFILTER_XT_MARK

After that using emerge will get you all you need:

$ emerge wireguard

Tools

The default distribution of tools come with the wg command and an helper script called wg-quick that makes easier to bring up and down the virtual network interface.

wg help
Usage: wg <cmd> [<args>]

Available subcommands:
  show: Shows the current configuration and device information
  showconf: Shows the current configuration of a given WireGuard interface, for use with `setconf'
  set: Change the current configuration, add peers, remove peers, or change peers
  setconf: Applies a configuration file to a WireGuard interface
  addconf: Appends a configuration file to a WireGuard interface
  genkey: Generates a new private key and writes it to stdout
  genpsk: Generates a new preshared key and writes it to stdout
  pubkey: Reads a private key from stdin and writes a public key to stdout
You may pass `--help' to any of these subcommands to view usage.

Usage: wg-quick [ up | down | save | strip ] [ CONFIG_FILE | INTERFACE ]

  CONFIG_FILE is a configuration file, whose filename is the interface name
  followed by `.conf'. Otherwise, INTERFACE is an interface name, with
  configuration found at /etc/wireguard/INTERFACE.conf. It is to be readable
  by wg(8)'s `setconf' sub-command, with the exception of the following additions
  to the [Interface] section, which are handled by wg-quick:

  - Address: may be specified one or more times and contains one or more
    IP addresses (with an optional CIDR mask) to be set for the interface.
  - DNS: an optional DNS server to use while the device is up.
  - MTU: an optional MTU for the interface; if unspecified, auto-calculated.
  - Table: an optional routing table to which routes will be added; if
    unspecified or `auto', the default table is used. If `off', no routes
    are added.
  - PreUp, PostUp, PreDown, PostDown: script snippets which will be executed
    by bash(1) at the corresponding phases of the link, most commonly used
    to configure DNS. The string `%i' is expanded to INTERFACE.
  - SaveConfig: if set to `true', the configuration is saved from the current
    state of the interface upon shutdown.

See wg-quick(8) for more info and examples.

Creating a configuration

Wireguard is quite straightforward, you can either prepare a configuration with your favourite text editor or generate one by setting by hand the virtual network device and then saving the result wg showconf presents.

A configuration file then can be augmented with wg-quick-specific options (such as Address) or just passed to wg setconf while the other networking details are managed by your usual tools (e.g. ip).

Create your keys

The first step is to create the public-private key pair that identifies your peer.

  • wg genkey generates a private key for you.
  • You feed it to wg pubkey to have your public key.

In a single line:

$ wg genkey | tee privkey | wg pubkey > pubkey

Prepare a configuration file

Both wg-quick and wg setconf use an ini-like configuration file.

If you put it in /etc/wireguard/${ifname}.conf then wg-quick would just need the interface name and would look it up for you.

The minimum configuration needs an [Interface] and a [Peer] set.
You may add additional peers later.
A server would specify its ListenPort and identify the peers by their PublicKey.

[Interface]
Address = 192.168.2.1/24
ListenPort = 51820
PrivateKey = <key>

[Peer]
PublicKey = <key>
AllowedIPs = 192.168.2.2/32

A client would have a peer with an EndPoint defined and optionally not specify the ListenPort in its interface description.

[Interface]
PrivateKey = <key>
Address = 192.168.2.2/24

[Peer]
PublicKey = <key>
AllowedIPs = 192.168.2.0/24
Endpoint = <ip>:<port>

The AllowedIPs mask let you specify how much you want to route over the vpn.
By setting 0.0.0.0/0 you tell you want to route ALL the traffic through it.

NOTE: Address is a wg-quick-specific option.

Using a configuration

wg-quick is really simple to use, assuming you have created /etc/wireguard/wg0.conf:

$ wg-quick up wg0

$ wg-quick down wg0

If you are using netifrc from version 0.6.1 wireguard is supported and you can have a configuration such as:

config_wg0="192.168.2.4/24"
wireguard_wg0="/etc/wireguard/wg0.conf"

With the wg0.conf file like the above but stripped of the wg-quick-specific options.

Summing up

Wireguard is a breeze to set up compared to nearly all the other vpn solutions.

Non-linux systems can currently use a go implementation and in the future a rust implementation (help welcome).

Android and macos have already some pretty front-ends that make the setup easy even on those platforms.

I hope you enjoyed it 🙂

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