VDEPN -- VDEPN Does Extend Private Networking
=============================================

VDEPN is a small piece of software I wrote to help myself managing the
$verybig number of Private Networks I daily use.

VDEPN saves all your configuration into a big single file placed in
your personal $HOME/.config directory, it shouldn't be too difficult
to tune it by hand if you find something that you can't do with the
graphical interface.


HOW IT WORKS
------------

It simply generates two scripts, one intended to be run in user mode
and one to be run in privileged mode, while the first one is the most
important one, since it creates the various vde_switches and creates
the SSH connection to the remote host, the latter one requires the
user to enter the root/sudo password, and it is nicely done using
PolicyKit.

On the left part of the window there are the various parameters such
as SSH user, SSH Host, remote socket path, local socket path, .. while
on the right part there are two small textviews, one for commands to
be run while in user mode and one for the commands to be run while in
root mode. Inside those TextView you can enter some variables which
will be expanded at runtime, so you may end up having a configuration
that opens an SSH connection with a LocalForward to a remote host and
after a successfull connection runs dhclient to obtain a valid IP.

The variables are:
   Variable                 Substitution
   --------					------------
   $MACHINE					SSH Host you're connecting to
   $USER					User who's trying to authenticate
   $IFACE					Name of the TUN/TAP interface will be used
   $PORT					Port of the SSH Host
   $LOCAL					Path of the local socket path
   $REMOTE					Path of the remote socket path
   $AND						Becomes & (this is necessary, since the
   							configuration is saved as XML)
   $CHECK					Becomes || (echo CMDERROR && exit 255).


An example of post-connection commands may be:
  dhclient -pf /tmp/dhcp$IFACE.pid $CHECK

Doing so, the command will become something like
  dhclient -pf /tmp/dhcpmynetwork.pid || (echo CMDERROR && exit 255)

And if you're not getting an IP address by DHCLIENT, VDEPN cleans up
the switch for you.


DEVELOPERS
----------

Actually, I'm quite alone in doing the job.

Massimo Gengarelli <gengarel@cs.unibo.it>


OBTAIN CODE
-----------

I'm actually using two git repos

http://git.casafamelica.info/vdepn.git
http://github.com/massix/vdepn

The first one is always updated, while the latter one is my `backup'
tree if the first one fails for some reason.