Android GUI for tinc

[Vil Brekin]

Hi Ivo,

Thanks for your feedback.
Please see my comments below.

Rgds,
V

2012/9/25 Ivo Smits <Ivo at ufo-net.nl>:
> Hi Vil,
>
> Thanks! This is great - much better than having to fight with PPTP or
> similar. After installing the tun module (via "TUN.ko installer" app) and
> your tinc GUI, and getting the configuration right it worked pretty well on
> my Acer Liquid Mt S120.
>
> Just a few comments:
> - After stopping tinc, stop button text does not always change back to start
Seems to be a GUI refresh bug. Did you stop tincd via the stop button,
or killed it manually?

> - Buttons look awfully simple and unaligned ;-)
As you can see, I'm far from being an experienced GUI developer, and
must tell this is not the most interesting part to me, as long as the
buttons work. But I should imrpove this anyway.

> - debug button does not seem to make a difference?
It sends signal to the tinc daemon to switch it to debug mode (level
5), so only works when the daemon is started. I should as well disable
it when it's stopped to avoid confusion.

> - tinc is looking for /dev/net/tun while my phone only has /dev/tun (might
> be device specific? symlink or configuration directive fixes this)
I personnaly use the "Device=/dev/tun" from the configuration file to
specify which file to use.

> - config file selection shows empty list for /data because /data is chmod
> 771 by default, perhaps you can work around this by reading the directory as
> root?
Would be quite a pain, as I would have to parse command line results
to browse directories (as you can only start sub-processes with root
right, not get them on the main process).
Anyway I advise using a folder in /sdcard, so you can update it easily
from your computer.

> - I forgot that I had to use the tinc-up script for IP address
> configuration, my bad. You could perhaps create a nice GUI which creates the
> tinc-up script, tinc.conf and local node configuration/keys.
I've been thinking about it, but it would be quite a lot of work as
well, and I'm not sure this is really useful to the
 tinc users: indeed, for me the easiest solution is still to build the
configuration on the target computer, and copy it on the phone.
BTW, it seems it's already scheduled to simplify tinc's configuration
process in future releases, so it might be a duplicate task...


>
> Anyway, I can now watch a live TV stream over the VPN via 3G on my phone.
> Great!
>
> Ivo
>
> Op 24-9-2012 17:03, Vil Brekin schreef:
>
>> Hi Adam,
>>
>> As for tinc on linux, you'll need a TUN/TAP device on android as well
>> (my app is just a basic GUI over the standard tinc daemon). I'm not
>> sure it's available on every ROM. I use CM9/10 on a SGS2, and the
>> driver is included in the kernel.
>> Same, you can disable root usage in the application (in the settings),
>> but it's probably needed to access the TUN/TAP device anyway...
>>
>> The GUI is minimalistic, and is mainly used to deploy the tincd binary
>> and launch/monitor it easily.
>> For the configuration, the easiest solution is to build it from a PC
>> and copy it to your phone's SD card.
>> This might not be easy enough for the average android user, however I
>> guess tinc's user are more in the geek category :)
>>
>> Anyway, any feedback is welcome to help me improving it.
>>
>> Rgds,
>> V
>>
>> 2012/9/24 Adam Del Vecchio <adam at adamdelvecchio.name>:
>>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> I've just installed the app but have yet to use it. It seems functional,
>>> however. I will configure and report here later tonight.
>>>
>>> Will I need to specify a specific Device/Interface in order for it to
>>> work correctly on the Nexus 7?
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Adam
>>>
>>> Vil Brekin <vilbrekin at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hello,
>>>>
>>>> As I was missing an Android port of tinc (thanks for this great
>>>> tool!), I built one by myself.
>>>> It's simply a cross-compiled version of tinc daemon (with very few
>>>> changes), and a (basic) GUI application for Android to deploy and
>>>> manage it.
>>>>
>>>> Both my changes to original tinc and the GUI are available on GitHub:
>>>> - https://github.com/Vilbrekin/tinc
>>>> - https://github.com/Vilbrekin/tinc_gui
>>>>
>>>> The tinc GUI is available on Google Play as well:
>>>>
>>>> https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.poirsouille.tinc_gui&feature=search_result#?t=W251bGwsMSwyLDEsIm9yZy5wb2lyc291aWxsZS50aW5jX2d1aSJd
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> My changes to original tinc being minimal (added ifdef for 2 missing
>>>> functions on Android NDK, and a new configuration file option), I was
>>>> thinking of merging them with upstream. Are you accepting pull
>>>> requests?
>>>>
>>>> Rgds,
>>>> V
>>>> _______________________________________________
>>>> tinc mailing list
>>>> tinc at tinc-vpn.org
>>>> http://www.tinc-vpn.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tinc
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> tinc mailing list
>>> tinc at tinc-vpn.org
>>> http://www.tinc-vpn.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tinc
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> tinc mailing list
>> tinc at tinc-vpn.org
>> http://www.tinc-vpn.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tinc
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> tinc mailing list
> tinc at tinc-vpn.org
> http://www.tinc-vpn.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tinc