Hi folks, I’m just getting into this hobby thanks to the posts in this community. So far, I’ve installed Ubuntu server 22.04 on an old laptop and got paperless working, and I’m pretty pumped. Now I would like to access it outside of my home network on my phone.

I have a Netgear R7000 with Advanced Tomato installed. Here’s my plan, but I don’t know if it would work… So I’m hoping for a peer review of sorts.

  • Get openVPN working on the router as a server.
  • make a certificate for my phone and use it as a client.
  • use my fedora laptop as the CA (?).

I think I need to use easy-RDA to make the keys and certificates…

Does that sound about right? It’s this a good approach or is there something better/easier/more effective?

If there’s a great tutorial around for accessing the home network externally, I’d super appreciate it. Would obviously prefer to do it myself and not pay for a service… I’ve been enjoying the learning experience!

  • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    Tailscale using headscale is basically hosting your personal Tailscale network, which is nice and makes it open source too, just FYI

    • Drudge@lemmy.worldOP
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      1 year ago

      I just came across headscale…looks kinda neat. The docs have me a bit scared though - from the Installation section: “Configure Headscale by editing the configuration file”…uhm ya I’ll just go configure all of the things to do all of the stuff, hehe.

      • MigratingtoLemmy@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Haha, FOSS is often getting right into it, at a deep level. I wouldn’t be too worried about it as long as one conceptually understands what is happening (if not, ask here on Lemmy!)

        • Drudge@lemmy.worldOP
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          1 year ago

          Good idea…I just it a bunch for other stuff but hadn’t thought to use it for this. Thanks!

        • Difficult_Bit_1339@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          Chatgpt is a camp for just YOLOing off into some new software. Unless it is after the knowledge cutoff it’s pretty accurate about configurations and such. It makes mistakes but it’ll get you started a lost faster.

          • randomguy2323@lemmy.fmhy.ml
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            1 year ago

            What I notice also is that if you keep feeding it with info about your problem and have discussion it will eventually figure it out.

            • Difficult_Bit_1339@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              Most of the time I just copy/paste the terminal output and say ‘it didn’t work’ and it’ll come back with ‘I’m sorry, I meant [new command]’.

              It isn’t something that I’d trust to run unattended terminal commands (yet) but it is very good when you’re just like ‘Hey, I want to try to install pihole today, how do I install and configure it’, or ‘Here’s my IP Tables entry, why can’t I connect to this service’ … ‘Ok give me the commands to update the entry to do whatever it was you just said’.