Android GUI for tinc

Fri Sep 28 14:18:10 CEST 2012

Hi Vil,

Thanks for your answers. By the way, I noticed my battery drains much 
faster when tinc is running? Not very surprising I guess, the traffic 
from the other nodes will probably keep the 3G connection active a lot 
more than usual.

Ivo

Op 26-9-2012 17:59, Vil Brekin schreef:
> 2012/9/25 Ivo Smits <Ivo op ufo-net.nl>:
>> 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?
If I stop tinc via the Stop button, the button text does not change. If 
I kill tincd manually (killall tincd), the button text changes to Start!
>> - 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.
I totally understand - don't worry about it.
>> - 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.
Debug button does not change anything in the tincd output. Manually 
sending SIGINT to tincd does activate level 5 debug mode, so I think the 
signal is not sent. Tinc is running as root.
>> - 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.
Thanks, that works too. I don't know if it makes sense to change the 
default for android builds?
>> - 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 see. I tried to use /sdcard first, but I couldn't set the permissions 
necessary to execute the tinc-up script (to configure the interface), so 
that didn't work for me. I changed the permissions on /data to be world 
readable.
>> - 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 op 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 op 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
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