#### Use Google DNS servers Some have encountered problems with DNS resolving inside the docker container. This causes trouble because OpenVPN will not be able to resolve the host to connect to. If you have this problem use Docker's --dns flag and try using Google's DNS servers by adding --dns 8.8.8.8 --dns 8.8.4.4 as parameters to the usual run command. #### Restart the container if the connection is lost If the VPN connection fails or the container for any other reason loses connectivity, you want it to recover from it. One way of doing this is to set the environment variable `OPENVPN_OPTS=--inactive 3600 --ping 10 --ping-exit 60` and use the --restart=always flag when starting the container. This way OpenVPN will exit if ping fails over a period of time which will stop the container and then the Docker daemon will restart it. #### Let other containers use the VPN To let other containers use VPN you have to add them to the same Service network as your VPN container runs, you can do this by adding `network_mode: "service:transmission-openvpn"`. Additionally, you have to set `depends_on` to the `transmission-openvpn` service to let docker-compose know that your new container should start **after** `transmission-openvpn` is up and running. As the final step, you can add `healthcheck` to your service. As an example, let's add [Jackett](https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-jackett) to the `transmission-openvpn` network based on the example from [Running the container](run-container.md): ```yaml version: '3.3' services: transmission-openvpn: cap_add: - NET_ADMIN volumes: - '/your/storage/path/:/data' environment: - OPENVPN_PROVIDER=PIA - OPENVPN_CONFIG=france - OPENVPN_USERNAME=user - OPENVPN_PASSWORD=pass - LOCAL_NETWORK=192.168.0.0/16 logging: driver: json-file options: max-size: 10m ports: - '9091:9091' - '9117:9117' # This is Jackett Port – managed by VPN Service Network image: haugene/transmission-openvpn jackett: image: lscr.io/linuxserver/jackett:latest container_name: jackett environment: - PUID=1000 - PGID=1000 - TZ=Europe/London - AUTO_UPDATE=true #optional - RUN_OPTS= #optional volumes: - :/config - :/downloads # You have to comment ports, they should be managed in transmission-openvpn section now. # ports: # - 9117:9117 restart: unless-stopped network_mode: "service:transmission-openvpn" # Add to the transmission-openvpn Container Network depends_on: - transmission-openvpn # Set dependency on transmission-openvpn Container healthcheck: # Here you will check if transmission is reachable from the Jackett container via localhost test: curl -f http://localhost:9091 || exit 1 # Use this test if you protect your transmission with a username and password # comment the test above and un-comment the line below. #test: curl -f http://${TRANSMISSION_RPC_USERNAME}:${TRANSMISSION_RPC_PASSWORD}@localhost:9091 || exit 1 interval: 5m00s timeout: 10s retries: 2 ``` ##### Check if the container is using VPN After the container starts, simply call `curl` under it to check your IP address, for example with Jackett you should see your VPN IP address as output: ```bash docker exec jackett curl -s https://api.ipify.org ``` You can also check that Jackett is attached to the VPN network by pinging it from the `transmission-openvpn` Container `localhost`: ```bash docker exec transmission-vpn curl -Is http://localhost:9117 HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently Date: Tue, 17 May 2022 19:58:19 GMT Server: Kestrel Location: /UI/Dashboard ``` #### Reach sleep or hibernation on your host if no torrents are active By default, Transmission will always [scrape](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracker_scrape) trackers, even if all torrents have completed their activities, or they have been paused manually. This will cause Transmission to be always active, therefore never allow your host server to be inactive and go to sleep/hibernation/whatever. If this is something you want, you can add the following variable when creating the container. It will turn off a hidden setting in Transmission which will stop the application to scrape trackers for paused torrents. Transmission will become inactive, and your host will reach the desired state. ```bash -e "TRANSMISSION_SCRAPE_PAUSED_TORRENTS_ENABLED=false" ``` #### Running it on a NAS Several popular NAS platforms support Docker containers. You should be able to set up and configure this container using their web interfaces. As of version 3.0 of this image creates a TUN interface inside the container by default. This previously had to be mounted from the host which was an issue for some NAS servers. The assumption is that this should now be fixed. If you have issues and the logs seem to blame "/dev/net/tun" in some way then you might consider trying to mount a host device and see if that works better. Setting up a TUN device is probably easiest to accomplish by installing an OpenVPN package for the NAS. This should set up the device and you can mount it. There are some issues involved in running it on Synology NAS, Please see this issue that discusses [solutions](https://github.com/haugene/docker-transmission-openvpn/issues/1542#issuecomment-793605649) #### Systemd Integration On many modern Linux systems, including Ubuntu, systemd can be used to start the transmission-openvpn at boot time, and restart it after any failure. Save the following as `/etc/systemd/system/transmission-openvpn.service`, and replace the OpenVPN PROVIDER/USERNAME/PASSWORD directives with your settings, and add any other directives that you're using. This service is assuming that there is a `bittorrent` user set up with a home directory at `/home/bittorrent/`. The data directory will be mounted at `/home/bittorrent/data/`. This can be changed to whichever user and location you're using. OpenVPN is set to exit if there is a connection failure. OpenVPN exiting triggers the container to also exit, and then the `Restart=always` definition in the `transmission-openvpn.service` file tells systems to restart things again. ```bash [Unit] Description=haugene/transmission-openvpn docker container After=docker.service Requires=docker.service [Service] User=bittorrent TimeoutStartSec=0 ExecStartPre=-/usr/bin/docker kill transmission-openvpn ExecStartPre=-/usr/bin/docker rm transmission-openvpn ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/docker pull haugene/transmission-openvpn ExecStart=/usr/bin/docker run \ --name transmission-openvpn \ --cap-add=NET_ADMIN \ -v /home/bittorrent/data/:/data \ -e "OPENVPN_PROVIDER=TORGUARD" \ -e "OPENVPN_USERNAME=bittorrent@example.com" \ -e "OPENVPN_PASSWORD=hunter2" \ -e "OPENVPN_CONFIG=CA Toronto" \ -e "OPENVPN_OPTS=--inactive 3600 --ping 10 --ping-exit 60" \ -p 9091:9091 \ --dns 8.8.8.8 \ --dns 8.8.4.4 \ haugene/transmission-openvpn Restart=always RestartSec=5 [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target ``` Then enable and start the new service with: ```bash $ sudo systemctl enable /etc/systemd/system/transmission-openvpn.service $ sudo systemctl restart transmission-openvpn.service ``` If it is stopped or killed in any fashion, systemd will restart the container. If you do want to shut it down, then run the following command and it will stay down until you restart it. ```bash $ sudo systemctl stop transmission-openvpn.service # Later ... $ sudo systemctl start transmission-openvpn.service ``` #### Running with Traefik reverse proxy A working example of running this container behind a traefik reverse proxy can be found here: [Config](https://github.com/haugene/docker-transmission-openvpn/issues/1763#issuecomment-844404143)