Discussion, talk and tips
https://forum.puppylinux.com/
Hello i am trying to install a .run in Fossapup. It wont let me run, as it needs to be not root, it is a VPN app i want to install. i can use a firefox browser app, ok it seems to work fine. but would like the Linux run a.
Sorry i have used puppy linux for 15 years +, but am yes a real begginer. Still. Regards Ken
give us a download link for it.
So we can download and try it.
@bean you can try to start the .run like this :
With the Rox file manager go to the directory containing the .run file making sure the permissions to execute it are correct.
open a terminal in this directory (or open a terminal and cd to the directory)
type:
Code: Select all
run-as-spot .runThis script will attempt to start the .run as user spot
Or this might do it:
open a terminal in the same place and type
Code: Select all
su spot
./.runIf all this fails try in the same terminal:
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sudo -u spot .runthanks, all here is the link it is a vpn app it downloads as a .run file i did try to run as spot etc etc, no luck i spent many hours googling to try make run/execute etc blah, but no luck
as i said the browser extension works well, just wanted the program/app
regards
oops link https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/d ... /linux-vpn
It is an installer for the VPN GUI (rather large) and I can get it to start to run but it quickly asks me for my account password for the VPN provider which obviously I don't have.
Try using the command like this:-
run-as-spot sh pia-linux-3.3.1-06924.run -- --skip-service
Obviously that is from within the directory where you have stored it and you must have made it executable
Here is what I get on my machine
Fresh boot of FossaPup:-
Code: Select all
root# run-as-spot sh pia-linux-3.3.1-06924.run -- --skip-service
Verifying archive integrity... 100% MD5 checksums are OK. All good.
Uncompressing Private Internet Access 100%
=================================
Private Internet Access Installer
=================================
Installing PIA for x86_64, system is x86_64
We trust you have received the usual lecture from the local System
Administrator. It usually boils down to these three things:
#1) Respect the privacy of others.
#2) Think before you type.
#3) With great power comes great responsibility.
Password:
✔ Added group piavpn
We trust you have received the usual lecture from the local System
Administrator. It usually boils down to these three things:
#1) Respect the privacy of others.
#2) Think before you type.
#3) With great power comes great responsibility.
Password:thanks all, i got to where it starts to install, then it asks for a password, i tried root and spot, no luck then i tried my VPN password
no go merely states password incorrect. Thinking about it it cant be my VPN password because how does it know waht User Account i am,
Its not clear as to what the password is needed for eg to install, is it installed already ???
i tried installing or running as spot and root no go.
Hmm, yeah, when I saw that password request I just assumed it was wanting an account password for PIA but I guess I was wrong about that.
I see that it sets up a group named "piavpn"
So maybe you have to set up a password for that group within Puppy and then use the password again when the installer asks for it?
Just a wild guess. Maybe someone else has some ideas.
The other suggestion is to contact PIA customer support and see if they can tell you what password is needed.
Even if you can get past this, there may be other obstacles. These VPN programs can be difficult in Puppy sometimes, but it is nice to have the entire system routed through the VPN server. I presume that if you are just running it in a browser, it only applies to traffic through the browser and not other programs.
EDIT:- The PIA live chat support says that it should be the root password, but if I use the root password (woofwoof) or if I set and use a password for spot it then complains that:-
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spot is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.re--The PIA live chat support says that it should be the root password, but if I use the root password (woofwoof) or if I set and use a password for spot it then complains that:-
yes what i thought i changed root passwd to toor and spot to spot, actually as default they dont have passwords, but anyway neither root or spot work,
i will try set a password for piavpn group if possible.
but it is nice to have the entire system routed through the VPN server. yes that is what im hoping for, although not really needed, in
Windows 11, the PIA app/program is really good, great gui, lots of easily tweakable options, and Clear simple well thought out, the actual VPN functions EXTREMELY well imo, ( i have no affilation whatsoever, + huge choice of countries & servers, it acts/works incredibaly quickly in connecgting/reconnecting . So ends in a few months but certainly will renew. I hummed and haha'd when first lookig shoping, but from what i see, it is certainly one of the best, speed seems excellent.
Just listening to BBC Radio 4 money program about the substantial rise in online fraud and crime, twisted my arm a year back. Will try again. Again the PIA Firefox browser extention works well, but is pretty limited in options and number of servers although that does not really bother me.
Hi all!
PIA allows setting up openvpn without pia-app. Just so you know 
https://helpdesk.privateinternetaccess. ... e-terminal
I have always been told that the root password is woofwoof but I have never found a need to use it.
I used the command passwd spot to set the spot password as woofwoofwoof
Then it looks like the PIA installer is accepting either woofwoofwoof or woofwoof
BUT then you immediately hit the next obstacle
The file /etc/sudoers has no mention of user spot
Maybe it is possible to edit that file so that user spot is recognised, but I don't know what the edit should look like
Actually, the file said you have to use a specific tool to edit it
Perhaps someone knows more about that?
Visudo probably. Though i never had any trouble editing /etc/sudoers with just a text editor, so far.
https://www.computerhope.com/unix/visudo.htm
sudo never asks for the root password. It always wants the password of the unprivileged user who is trying to run an executable as if it is root (or as the user that owns the executable file.)
sudo needs suid to be set, to allow spot to execute sudo as if spot is user root, using sudo.
You can duplicate the lines in sudoers for root, changing root to spot.
That gives spot the same powers as root. But that also changes spots uid to 0, the same uid that root has. This doesn't help with running a browser as spot, because the browser usually refuses to run not if the user name is root, it refuses to run if the users uid is 0.
For spot to be able to use su, then su needs to have suid set. If su is a busybox applet, then busybox needs to have suid set. Then all it's applets will have suid set. Which is not a good idea.
I use geany if I edit the sudoers file. If the sudoers file has an error in it, it can prevent the OS booting. But Puppy can be repaired easily. For example, booting pfix=ram.
An error in the sudoers file could corrupt the security system, without giving you error messages. But Puppy runs as root anyway.
visudo checks for errors in the sudoeors file, geany does not.
I managed to get something to install, not able to test without an account of course.
In /etc/sudoers the line is:-
%spot ALL=(ALL) ALL
(I uncommented and edited the line about group "wheel")
Then when I entered my new password for spot it installed
There was an error regarding awk not finding an iproute2 file or something (see below)
Most of the stuff gets installed into /opt/piavpn
Not sure if /opt/piavpn/lib needs to be added to LD_LIBRARY_PATH but I did anyway.
You have to make provision to start the daemon as well as launching the client I think
/opt/piavpn/bin/pia-daemon
/opt/piavpn/bin/pia-client
So not sure if it fully works, but making some progress
Ah, here is what the installation progress now looks like in terminal
Code: Select all
root# run-as-spot sh pia-linux-3.3.1-06924.run -- --skip-service
Verifying archive integrity... 100% MD5 checksums are OK. All good.
Uncompressing Private Internet Access 100%
=================================
Private Internet Access Installer
=================================
Installing PIA for x86_64, system is x86_64
We trust you have received the usual lecture from the local System
Administrator. It usually boils down to these three things:
#1) Respect the privacy of others.
#2) Think before you type.
#3) With great power comes great responsibility.
Password:
sudo: groupadd: command not found
✔ Added group piavpn
sudo: groupadd: command not found
✔ Added group piahnsd
✔ Copied Private Internet Access files
✔ Created var folder
✔ Installed icon
✔ Created desktop entry
awk: fatal: cannot open file `/etc/iproute2/rt_tables' for reading (No such file or directory)
awk: fatal: cannot open file `/etc/iproute2/rt_tables' for reading (No such file or directory)
awk: fatal: cannot open file `/etc/iproute2/rt_tables' for reading (No such file or directory)
awk: fatal: cannot open file `/etc/iproute2/rt_tables' for reading (No such file or directory)
✔ Finished. You will need to manually configure /opt/piavpn/bin/pia-daemon to start at boot.
root#AFAIK, spot ALL=(ALL) ALL gives spot all the powers that root has.
But it also seems to make spot's uid = 0
Most software seems to check not your user name, but if your uid is 0.
typing id should show you your uid.
You can also type id spot and id root
Hello williams2,
I am wondering if perhaps we only needed spot to get the installer to run and the edit of /etc/sudoers was just to get around the checks that the installer carried out?
Now that the files have all installed I have grabbed them and made a .PET of everything. Maybe the daemon and client don't need to be run as spot once installation is complete. The daemon refuses to run without group named "piavpn" although task manager shows it as running as root.
I am experimenting with using the command:-
adduser -D -H piavpn piavpn
I think that creates user and group with that name
Then a little script to start it, keeping only one instance of the daemon
But I can not test the full operation of it unfortunately.
I experimented a bit with the sudoers file a few years ago, figuring that spot with more powers (superspot?) might be convenient, for example, being able to save directly to /mnt/home easily. But not so much power that the system assigns spot uid=0. But I would need to read the fine manual.
I can set up my /mnt/home so that spot can write to it.
I just make /mnt/home/ owned by group disk.
spot is a member of group disk but i need to use the mount option allow_other too.
Then spot can write directly to /mnt.home/
Like this, which mounts my ntfs partition /dev/sda4 on /mnt/home/
gid 100 is the disk group.
ntfs-3g /dev/sda4 /mnt/home -o umask=0002,no_def_opts,noatime,rw,silent,allow_other,gid=100
Which I can do because I run pfix=ram, and I can mount /dev/sda4 on /mnt/home/
and I can unmount it anytime, because /mnt/home/ is not a layer in aufs.
The rest of my file system is all in ram, so I don't care if it doesn't unmount properly.
Maybe a bit off topic.
re- PIA allows setting up openvpn without pia-app. Just so you know, ......................................... tried that but i cant download/install using apt command in terminal.
so then with PPM installed openvpn with Gnome Gui, it installs opens fine i put in VPN ip User & Pw etc no go wont connect.
There is a Gpptvpn program under Network in menu, but as above enter ip U & Pwd no go .
is there no way install the VPN .run program with ROOT? or is that how Fossapup/puppy work.
i am thinking Wireguard but dont know anything about it.
Strictly for testing
This is the PIA that installed in my test system, packaged as .PET
(Edit:- Older package now removed)
Take all usual precautions, maybe test in a pfix=ram fresh boot
Note that installing the .pet sets up the piavpn user and group within your system
Note that the pia-daemon continues to run in the background once started (unless you kill it)
I suspect it will not fully work, chances are slim, but it needs somebody with an account to try to log in and test it
bean wrote: ↑Thu Aug 18, 2022 10:53 amre- PIA allows setting up openvpn without pia-app. Just so you know, ......................................... tried that but i cant download/install using apt command in terminal.
so then with PPM installed openvpn with Gnome Gui, it installs opens fine i put in VPN ip User & Pw etc no go wont connect.
There is a Gpptvpn program under Network in menu, but as above enter ip U & Pwd no go .
is there no way install the VPN .run program with ROOT? or is that how Fossapup/puppy work.
i am thinking Wireguard but dont know anything about it.
Hello,
I am curious to know if you were able to test the .PET version I posted above. Any questions just let me know.
I think the pia-app contains its own instance of openvpn.
Regarding setting up without the pia-app there is my simple VPN implementation, aka "vpn-onoff" which also contains its own openvpn
With a little bit of adaptation you can grab the .ovpn config file(s) from PIA for the server(s) you want to connect to
I'm pretty sure it works, but best to set up for one chosen server then click in and out of VPN as you wish
This is the FossaPup version of it:-
http://smokey01.com/OscarTalks/vpn-onof ... -fossa.pet
The gpptp program is for connection via a different protocol (pptp) and only works if the provider supports it. The protocol is considered to not be as good as openvpn
Wireguard requires a kernel module which is not included in FossaPup, but the module can be compiled from source and added. I think I have a .PET package of that somewhere, but I have always been happy using openvpn so never felt any urgency to figure out how to set up wireguard.
hi Oscar re- I am curious to know if you were able to test the .PET version I posted above. Any questions just let me know.
I think the pia-app contains its own instance of openvpn.
Will try in next few minutes and report my findings. Regards
Thanks all for a great help,
both piavpn and vpn-onoff pets install and run correctly and both shows under Menu Network
Imo vpn-onoff is not really needed ( i could be wrong) as the actuall VPN shows on Taskbar showing if connected and allowing turning on/off the.
I set the VPN to launch and connect from startup.
.....all working fine.
FWIW the PIA gui program is pretty comprehensive in features, and really easy to work,
** Wireguard protocol does not work only Openvpn, i think is the Linux/Puppy side, since it works on Windows 11 PRO, although i dont use.
additonally the Net_Info_&_Geolocation-V1.pet is a handy little program as well, displaying your external public ip and location.
again thanks everyone
regards ken
links
Hello Ken,
I am pleased to hear that the piavpn .PET is working when logged in to your account
Initially I would only expect it to work via the openvpn protocol, but openvpn is still considered very good.
If you want to continue some further testing, there is a wireguard kernel module .PET which I compiled
Uploading directly to the forum (see below)
You may need to set up your system to make sure this module loads in future boots, not sure.
In terminal, run lsmod | grep wireguard to check if it is loaded
This will only work with the original FossaPup kernel version (modules are kernel specific)
Once installed, try configuring for wireguard protocol, following the PIA instructions.
If the piavpn program is working, the vpn-onoff program is probably not needed as you say. I only mentioned it because others were talking about connecting to PIA VPN without the piavpn program. My vpn-onoff is really designed for running some free VPN services (for people who do not have an account with any provider). It used to work out of the box but the default server (cryptofree) has been closed, so now it requires a little bit of editing to get it to work at all, but with a tiny bit of extra editing it can also be configured to work with providers like PIA, but since the main piavpn program is working you could probably ignore or even uninstall vpn-onoff if you want to.
thanks vpn-onoff program works well, as you said for those on other vpns thats great.
i shall test your wireguard-1.0-fossa.pet and report back,
Hi the above pia-linux 3.3.1 pet is running very well, robust and stable, there is a new update 3.4 beta.1 which PIA popup informs anyway i tried to install/upgrade i cant.
big cheeky ask, is there anyway some could make a new 3.4 beta.1 .pet ?
The PIA website still only offers the 3.3.1 release package. I spoke to someone via the webchat and tried to ask for a download link for the 3.4 beta1 but they said it is only available through the app. This new version is a beta so an upgrade might actually introduce problems (you are testing it for them). You can turn off the notifications regarding beta updates if they are annoying you. If the program is fully working for you I would suggest just sticking with it for now and maybe when 3.4 becomes a release it might be worth looking at.
Hello Oscar, any chance of another .pet the new beta are here
https://github.com/pia-foss/desktop/releases
sorry to be so forward, i thought i would try and make a pet myself well many hours later with a headache, sadly way beyond my skills, kind regards
Bean