ProtonVPN at startup on Linux

<p> ProtonVPN is a great service. In this article I will show you how to configure it to run at startup on Linux machines. This is ideal for <a class="wikilink" href="/raspberry_pi/"> Raspberry Pi </a> which you want to keep secured. </p> <p> <strong> NOTE </strong> : ProtonVPN-CLI does not work on a headless Linux installation (Updated: 10-January-2022). The best way forward is to use <a href="https://github.com/Rafficer/linux-cli-community"> the community version </a> . The following steps are based on it and not on the official solution. </p> <p> <a href="https://protonvpn.com/"> ProtonVPN </a> is a great VPN solution which includes also a free tier. Some months ago they've released an updated version of their <a href="https://protonvpn.com/support/linux-vpn-tool/"> command-line tool </a> which allows you to connect to the ProtonVPN servers directly. However, this new version is not compatible out-of-the-box with the previous version. It gave me a lot of headaches to find a way to run it automatically at startup on my Raspberry Pi. </p> <p> If you want to run something at startup, the best idea is to run it as a service. This gives you a lot of control regarding when to run it, how to stop it, etc. After you followed the installation instructions on the website, you will need to define a new service, which starts after the network connection has been established. It will also need to run as <code> sudo </code> , or it will fail to start (running as root user does not work on Ubuntu/Debian systems). The first step is to know where the protonvpn command was installed on your system: </p> <pre class="codehilite"><code class="language-bash">which protonvpn </code></pre> <p> The output should be something like: <code> /usr/local/bin/protonvpn </code> , but if it is not, pay attention and change it in the code block below. </p> <p> Create a file <strong> protonvpn.service </strong> in the folder <code> /etc/systemd/system/ </code> , and add the following: </p> <pre class="codehilite"><code class="language-bash">[Unit] Description=ProtonVPN-CLI auto-connect Wants=network-online.target [Service] Type=forking ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/protonvpn c -f Environment=PVPN_WAIT=300 Environment=PVPN_DEBUG=1 Environment=SUDO_USER=user [Install] WantedBy=multi-user.target </code></pre> <p> Remember to change the line <code> Environment=SUDO_USER=user </code> with the appropriate user name, for example <code> pi </code> , etc. Also, if you want to change the type of connection, you should edit the line starting with <code> ExecStart </code> with whatever command you would like to run. </p> <p> Once you have it, you just need to enable it and start it: </p> <pre class="codehilite"><code class="language-bash">sudo systemctl daemon-reload sudo systemctl enable protonvpn sudo systemctl start protonvpn </code></pre> <p> You can check the status of proton vpn in two different ways, by monitoring the status of the service or by using the command line tool itself: </p> <pre class="codehilite"><code class="language-bash">sudo systemctl status protonvpn protonvpn status </code></pre> <p> If you ever want to stop or restart the service, you can do: </p> <pre class="codehilite"><code class="language-bash">sudo systemctl restart protonvpn sudo systemctl stop protonvpn </code></pre> <p> Note that solutions based on <code> cron </code> tend not to work properly, since they tend to run before the network becomes active, and thus the command will fail. </p>