cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/19035305

[Promoting] Gluetun: The Little VPN Client That Could

My journey with docker started with a bunch of ill fated attempts to get an OpenVPN/qBittorrent container running. The thing ended up being broken and never worked right, and it put me off of VPN integration for another year or so.

Then recently I found Gluetun…and holy fucking cow. This thing is the answer to every VPN need I could possibly think of. I have set it up with 3 different providers now, and it has been more simple and reliable than the clients made by the VPN providers themselves every time.

If you combine the power of Gluetun with the power of Portainer, then you can even easily edit settings for your existing containers and hook them up to a VPN connection in seconds (or disconnect them). Just delete the forwarded ports in the original container, select the Gluetun container as the network connection, and then forward the same ports in Gluetun. Presto, you now have a perfectly functioning container connected to a VPN with a killswitch.

So if any of y’all on the high seas have considered getting more serious about your privacy, don’t do what I did and waste a bunch of time on a broken container. Use Gluetun. Love Gluetun. Gluetun is the answer.

  • LifeBandit666English
    3•7 months ago

    I’ve tried a bunch of different approaches to VPN in my short self hosted journey.

    I chose Mullvad as my VPN and tried to make a container containing an OpenWRT router, a Windows machine, a bunch of containers within containers (Docker in LXC) before learning that’s a shit way of doing things, and then I found Gluetun.

    It was so simple to set up, and there was a dude on YouTube with all the Docker compose files and explanations, so I learned what I was doing as I was doing it.

    Ultimately the only reason I didn’t end up using it was because I didn’t have my Plex instance in the stack and it couldn’t communicate with the containers I was deploying, a trifle really.

    I took what I learned from my Gluetun stack and used it to run Docker in a Debian VM with a the Mullvad app running, which is arguably easier but uses more resources since I run a second VM with Plex and other server stuff in Docker, and I could theoretically run it all in the same VM with a little more knowledge.