Intro

Creates proxy servers for locations listed by a VPN provider, e.g. ExpressVPN, Surfshark, etc. Each (OpenVPN) location translates into a seperate docker container. The OpenVPN to Proxy conversion is provided by haugene/docker-transmission-openvpn.

Features

• Deletes transmission-ovpn containers which have status=created and are non functional
• Iterates over ports, until a free one is found to run a proxy container on in batch mode
• Supports many vpn providers, see the full list at vpn-configs-contrib.
• Configurable docker run --restart argument

Setup

• Copy spawn.sh from this repo to destination machine (linux)
• Retrieve the username & password, which are usually not the vpn login credentials, but special ones created by the provider, shown when choosing manual setup e.g.
  • ExpressVPN
  • Surfshark
• If only one location should be translated into a proxy server
  • Head over to vpn-configs-contrib
  • Find the folder of the vpn provider used
  • Copy the name of the server needed
  • Skip to the Usage part
• If many proxies need to be created at once, create a file called ovpn_list in the same directory as the script
  • Copy each needed location's name into the ovpn_list

Usage

Notes

• The .ovpn file to use is not provided as file, but as a name (string). The Transmission-service fetches the corresponding file and handles the rest
• The vpn providers supported are listed at vpn-configs-contrib
• The script parameters for spawn.sh below must be entered in the same order as listed
• When creating a proxy, the .ovpn can be added also, it will be removed by the script anyway
• Batch craeting with restart argument on-failure:5 is recommended, as non-functional vpn's won't constantly try to restart but stay stopped
• If the proxy container needs to be used by another container X:
  • Add 172.17.0.0/24 to the network parameter of the shell script, e.g. sudo ./spawn.sh ... 172.17.0.0/24,192.168.0.0/24
  • Run a shell inside the container X using docker exec -it <container_id_of_x> /bin/sh
  • Try to reach the docker host from within container X using ping -c 4 host.docker.internal
    • If it says ping: bad address 'host.docker.internal', add this to container X's run command: --add-host=host.docker.internal:host-gateway and resart it
    • If it (now) says e.g. PING host.docker.internal (172.17.0.1): 56 data bytes, the host and other containers can now be reached from inside of container X
    • Use host.docker.internal as the hostname and the proxy containers port to use the proxy

Script parameters

• vpn_location: The desired line chosen from the ovpn_list
• vpn_provider: The company of the service used (Internal or External), full list here
• starting_port: The port on which the proxy should serve in single mode, and where it should start iterating in batch mode (see Features)
• vpn_username: The expressvpn username which you kept handy (see setup above)
• vpn_password: The corresponding password
• container_restart: The docker run restart behaviour like always, unless-stopped, etc, see documentation
• network_cidr: The host network's range, e.g. 192.168.0.0/24

Single proxy creation

sudo ./spawn.sh \
    <vpn_location> \
    <vpn_provider> \
    <starting_port> \
    <vpn_username> \
    <vpn_password> \
    <container_restart> \
    <network_cidr>

Example:

Create a proxy server, which connects to "Hong Kong - 2" and be available on port 8900:

sudo ./spawn.sh \
    my_expressvpn_hong_kong_-_2_udp.ovpn \
    EXPRESSVPN \
    8900 \
    y7v1wwy6wg5vh8s9jfn2sj3c \
    ixay8f10fdljm31zks09x287 \
    always \
    192.168.0.0/24

Multi proxy creation (batch)

sudo ./spawn.sh \
    list \
    <vpn_provider> \
    <starting_port> \
    <vpn_username> \
    <vpn_password> \
    <container_restart> \
    <network_cidr>

Example:

If ovpn_list file contains

jp-tok-st014.prod.surfshark.com_udp.ovpn
ua-iev.prod.surfshark.com_udp.ovpn
us-nyc.prod.surfshark.com

Then the following would create 3 proxy servers, one for each location. First (Japan) would listen on port 8900, Second (Ukraine) on port 8901, etc.

sudo ./spawn.sh \
    list \
    SURFSHARK \
    8900 \
    someone@something.com \
    8x5o60nz22gll9o8qsf63to2 \
    on-failure:5 \
    192.168.0.0/24

Useful docker commands

Stop all openvpn containers

docker ps -a --format "{{.Names}}" | grep "openvpn" | xargs -r -I {} docker stop {}

Stop and remove all openvpn containers

docker ps -a --format "{{.Names}}" | grep "openvpn" | xargs -r -I {} docker rm -f {}

Remove only stopped openvpn containers

docker ps -a --filter "status=exited" --format "{{.ID}} {{.Names}}" | grep openvpn | cut -d ' ' -f1 | xargs docker rm -f

Shell into the container (if only one is running)

docker exec -it $(docker ps -a --format '{{.Names}}' | grep 'openvpn' | head -n 1) /bin/sh

Show logs of the container (in only one is running)

docker logs $(docker ps -a --format '{{.Names}}' | grep 'openvpn' | head -n 1)