9 April 2020

Creating a Split-tunnel user in PiVPN

Okay. So we’ve gone over creating users. In doing so we’ve gone over creating a user that would have a “full” vpn by using the default configuration that happens when you create a user with PiVPN…. But how do we set up a user with a “split-tunnel” vpn, in which only traffic destined for your home network goes thru your RPi?

What exactly is this “split-tunnel”? In a split-tunnel VPN, the endpoint device will be able to make a determination as to where to route it’s traffic, due to changes in the configuration rules. It will route traffic to your home network over the VPN, while routing all other traffic directly out to the Internet.

This split-tunneling actually my ideal setup. It is also ideal if you just wish to use just your Pi-Hole for DNS queries when you are not at home.

Because PiVPN makes things so easy, I currently just create two profiles for my devices. One full and one split-tunnel. However, I seem to be primarily using only the split-tunnel. So who knows… I’ll probably change this practice of mine in the future and just create the one profile, but for now I’m keeping both.

Okay. I’ve talked long enough about split-tunnels. How do we make this magic happen? Lets dive in…

We will add a user just as we did previously, then edit it’s configuration file to allow for the split tunnel. To add your split-tunnel user, type the following command below.

pivpn add

Then add the name of your split-tunnel user.
In my example, my user is named “P-W-W-F-split”

The next step is to open and edit the configuration file with the followign command.

sudo nano /etc/wireguard/configs/P-W-W-F-split.conf

A full tunnel will have the line:

AllowedIPs = 0.0.0.0/0, ::0/0

That is the line we want to change. The split tunnel config would be modified to show the subnet of your home network. This is the magic line that makes this a split-tunnel.

AllowedIPs = 192.168.1.0/24

*Note: It’s been mentioned in the comments that for this split tunnel to work correctly, folks have had to also add the VPN network’s range to the allowed networks for things and work as expected. That updated line is:

Allowed IP addresses: 10.6.0.0/24, 192.168.1.0/24

I’m not going to re-edit the images as I am no longer using this as my VPN solution. I only wanted to leave this note here for those that are following thru my tutorial so that they don’t become stuck.

The updated configs can be copied to the home config directory if you choose. This will make it easier if you are going to manually transferring a config file to a device, but I usually don’t, and just use the QR code mention in the next article.

To copy or backup your configuration files use the following command:

cp /etc/wireguard/configs/P-W-W-F.conf /home/pi/configs/P-W-W-F.conf
cp /etc/wireguard/configs/P-W-W-F-split.conf /home/pi/configs/P-W-W-F-split.conf

Next Article in this series: Part 6: Setup PiVPN Endpoint Device

Category: Linux, RaspberryPi, Raspbian, VPN | 12 Comments on Creating a Split-tunnel user in PiVPN