Continued use of `wg-quick save` and SaveConfig=true?

Eicke Herbertz wolletd at posteo.de
Fri Jan 8 10:42:26 UTC 2021


Hi,

I don't really want to advertise my stuff, but as I am running our server on systemd-networkd instead of wg-quick, I was in need and actually built a script [1] around awk.
It may be not particulary clean and I'm currently unsure if support for wg.conf-Syntax actually works, but it is probably still worth noting in this context.

Regards,
Eicke

[1] https://github.com/WolleTD/wg-setup

Am 4. Januar 2021 22:05:01 MEZ schrieb Maarten de Vries <maarten at de-vri.es>:
>
>On 04-01-2021 19:41, Adrian Larsen wrote:
>> Hi Jason,
>>
>> 1) From a manual operation point of view, I feel more comfortable if 
>> an Operator uses:
>>
>> # wg set wg0 peer ... allowed-ips ...
>> # wg-quick save wg0
>>
>> rather than editing manually the config file.
>>
>> In case the Wire Guard is running multiple peers with production 
>> traffic, I think an Operator can do less damage using the commands if
>
>> something goes wrong.
>
>
>Another solution could be to have a command line tool that modifies the
>
>configuration file. Kinda like `wg set` except for a config file
>instead 
>of a live interface. Would tooling like that alleviate your concerns of
>
>an operator messing up the configuration file?
>
>
>>
>> 2) From automation point of view, still I think that is easy to use 
>> the commands (on an script):
>>
>> # wg set wg0 peer ... allowed-ips ...
>> # wg-quick save wg0
>>
>> rather than using "sed" or "awk" to modify the config file.
>
>
>Yeah, sed and awk aren't necessarily the nicest solutions. Although
>they 
>would work fine in practice. But maybe a tool as mentioned above  could
>
>solve this. Even just a script as pretty front-end to the right sed/awk
>
>commands could be useful here.
>
>For automation, (re-)applying a config file does have an important 
>advantage over `wg set ... && wg-quick save ...`: you can be sure that 
>all changes are applied, even if the tunnel was temporarily gone for 
>some reason. Worst case, the changes are kept in the config file and 
>applied when the interface is created again.
>
>If you try to do `wg set ... && wg-quick save ...` while the WireGuard 
>interface doesn't exist, the changes are lost. (Or you have to fall
>back 
>to modifying the config file by hand, but we didn't want that.)
>
>This advantage may not matter for your application, I can't really know
>
>that. I suppose that depends on the kind of changes that are made to
>the 
>configuration at runtime.
>
>-- Maarten
>
>>
>> My 2 cents.
>>
>> Adrian
>>
>> On 04/01/2021 16:16, Maarten de Vries wrote:
>>> On 03-01-2021 20:59, Chris Osicki wrote:
>>>> On Sat, Jan 02, 2021 at 03:37:09PM +0100, Jason A. Donenfeld wrote:
>>>>> Hi,
>>>>>
>>>>> I was thinking recently that most people have switched from a
>model of
>>>>> updating the runtime configuration and then reading that back into
>a
>>>>> config file, to editing the config file and then syncing that with
>the
>>>>> runtime config. In other words, people have moved from doing:
>>>>>
>>>>> # wg set wg0 peer ... allowed-ips ...
>>>>> # wg-quick save wg0
>>>>>
>>>>> To doing:
>>>>>
>>>>> # vim /etc/wireguard/wg0.conf
>>>>> # wg syncconf wg0 <(wg-quick strip wg0)
>>>>>
>>>>> I think this is mostly a positive change too in terms of
>reliability.
>>>>> Reading back the runtime configuration was always a bit hit or
>miss,
>>>>> and I suspect that more times than not people have been confused
>by
>>>>> SaveConfig=true.
>>>>>
>>>>> That raises the question: are there good uses left for
>SaveConfig=true
>>>>> and `wg-quick save` that warrant keeping the feature around?
>>>>> Temporarily caching a roamed endpoint IP, perhaps, but how helpful
>is
>>>>> that?
>>>>>
>>>>> I haven't thought too deeply about this in order to be wedded to
>one
>>>>> outcome over the other yet, but seeing some confusion today,
>again, in
>>>>> #wireguard over the feature made me wonder.
>>>>>
>>>>> Any opinions on this? Any one on this list actively use this
>feature
>>>>> and see replacements for it (e.g. syncconf) as clearly inferior?
>>>>>
>>>>> Jason
>>>> Hi Jason
>>>>
>>>> Being an old fashioned Unix admin, ~30 years spent in this job, I 
>>>> vote for the traditional way of doing it:
>>>> change the config file and let the application reread it.
>>>> I think the KISS principle is still valid ;-)
>>>
>>> I totally agree. Reloading the config file is much nicer :)
>>>
>>> I also don't need to save roaming endpoints. All WireGuard tunnels I
>
>>> use have at-least one side with a fixed endpoint. And if that's not 
>>> the case I imagine you probably need a more complicated solution
>than 
>>> wg-quick.
>>>
>>>
>>>> Thanks for the excellent software, Jason!
>>>
>>> I also totally agree with this. WireGuard has made my life a lot 
>>> easier :)
>>>
>>>
>>> Regards,
>>>
>>> Maarten
>>>

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