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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

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Is there a way to use a vpn on one network card, and use a second network card for a regular connection? (lemmy.dbzer0.com)

submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I've got a Linux server running Xubuntu at the moment (It was a media player first), and it also runs two Minecraft servers for the family. It has two network cards that are both connected to the internet. Is there a way to bind the VPN to one of the cards and use the other one for regular use?

I've got Surfshark as my VPN, and it doesn't allow port forwarding under Linux. I've got some software that I want to keep behind the VPN, but the lack of port forwarding is stopping me from sharing the Minecraft servers, and when the VPN is active, it slows down the connection to some of my services like Plex.

I've tried to look it up, but I just don't know enough to get myself anywhere. I've found results that talk about name spaces and routing tables, but they assume a level of knowledge that I just haven't got yet.

I want to use the Arr suite and qBittorrent as the main programs behind the VPN, and Plex, Mylar (a comic manager), Syncthing, and Minecraft as the main programs without it. If I set up qBittorrent and the Arrs as Docker containers, can I use Gluetun to bind just them to the VPN? The VPN is using OpenVPN connections if that makes a difference.

Thanks in advance :)

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

Everything you said is true, but I don't think it's the complete answer the OP would like.

For instance if somebody goes to Google, on the raw network, and on the VPN. They would correctly expect that traffic to take two different routes, and come from different IP addresses

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 weeks ago

goes to Google, on the raw network, and on the VPN.

You can't "go" to a destination on two networks in a single request. It's all packets on a wire, if it comes from two sources, it was two requests.

Unless you mean two different requests. As in while on the VPN everything is tunneled, and while not on the VPN it's not, but this is the opposite of what the OP was asking for. He wants the VPN on for some use cases, and off for others. That's split tunneling.

He'll likely wind up with difficulties around trying to figure out which destinations he doesn't want routed through the VPN, because there's no way to do it by protocol, since routing happens on layer 3, not 4 or 7. He'll likely need to know those address in advance.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

I think the key to this idea is that as long as the VPN only apps are running in docker containers, container networking can be used to restrict their traffic to the vpn.

Apps like qBittorrent support proxy connection options for this scenario without containers.

https://github.com/qbittorrent/qBittorrent/wiki/Explanation-of-Options-in-qBittorrent#proxy-server