VPNMON VPNMON-R2 v2.65 -Jan 27, 2024- DISCONTINUED - Upgrade to VPNMON-R3 Available! (#3)

[kuki68ster]

My daily progress update... Things are coming along! Going with the minimalist @ColinTaylor color scheme...

View attachment 54385

Will it get all the NordVPN goodies? Like recommended cities, etc.

 

[Viktor Jaep]

Will it get all the NordVPN goodies? Like recommended cities, etc.

I haven't decided yet how custom this thing is going to get. Right now, it's open, customizable and configurable to be used with any VPN provider. The whole point behind this release was to help those who are running multiple VPN clients all at once - they could even be with different VPN providers. VPNMON-R3 will be able to individually monitor any of the 5 VPN client slots, determine if one needs to be reset, and use a custom list of preferred servers for each VPN slot to reconnect to.

This means you'll have (up to) 5 individual lists that you would need to maintain... again, for those who only want a specific VPN slot connecting to a certain subset of the same servers each time. This is completely opposite from the VPNMON-R2 SuperRandom(R) train of thought, where it could randomly connect to one of hundreds or thousands of servers inside a country.

I'm trying to keep it as simple as possible and extremely user-configurable at this point. There's always a possibility of creating a VPN Client Slot server list builder down the road that could create custom lists based on your preferences.

 

[Viktor Jaep]

Some more screenshots... made some progress with the operations menu, the VPN Client Slot Monitoring menu and the VPN Client Slot Server List Maintenance menu... It's been fun. Also enjoying changing up the look/feel of the interface... Continuing to come together! I'll get a public beta out this week as my Thanksgiving gift to you. Gobble gobble.

Standard view:

Show Operations Menu (not finished yet with menu items)...

Monitored VPN Slot Menu:

VPN Client Slot Server List Maintenance Menu:

Nano editor allowing you to add/delete VPN server entries for VPN Slot 1:

 

[Viktor Jaep]

BTW... To help keep VPNMON-R2 discussions on topic, I started a new thread for VPNMON-R3 discussions & progress updates... available here:

VPNMON - VPNMON-R3 - Early, early alpha discussion, progress & screenshots

Instead of posting all this stuff under VPNMON-R2, I thought it would be better suited under it's own thread for now... feel free to discuss/ask questions/whatnot here until an official release thread is created. :) Background: I haven't decided yet how custom this thing is going to get. Right...

www.snbforums.com

 

[bencehavran]

hey guys

Could you tell me if it's possible to disable just this feature, so it doesn't switch when the server load is high? I don't know why, but no matter the amount I set,(50-9999) the load is always higher, and it keeps switching servers constantly. Yes, I've tried multiple servers.
thanks

 

[Viktor Jaep]

hey guys

Could you tell me if it's possible to disable just this feature, so it doesn't switch when the server load is high? I don't know why, but no matter the amount I set,(50-9999) the load is always higher, and it keeps switching servers constantly. Yes, I've tried multiple servers.
thanks

View attachment 54630

I would set it to 99 if you wanted to disable this feature... I don't think a % would go over 100, so setting it to 99999 is probably causing some issues there.

 

[bencehavran]

I would set it to 99 if you wanted to disable this feature... I don't think a % would go over 100, so setting it to 99999 is probably causing some issues there.

Thanks for your quick response. I've already tried with 99 and 100. Unfortunately, it was unsuccessful. Now, I'm trying VPNMON-R3, which seems stable for the moment. (same servers)

 

[Viktor Jaep]

Thanks for your quick response. I've already tried with 99 and 100. Unfortunately, it was unsuccessful. Now, I'm trying VPNMON-R3, which seems stable for the moment. (same servers)

If you can grab your VPN server IP from the Merlin UI, you could run this statement from an SSH prompt, and see what message it gives you? Replace the IP in the statement below with your Nord VPN server IP.

echo $(curl --retry 3 --connect-timeout 3 --max-time 6 --retry-delay 1 --retry-all-errors https://api.nordvpn.com/server | jq --raw-output '.[] | select(.ip_address == "162.153.152.48") | .load')

It would give you output like this:

  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100 4532k    0 4532k    0     0  1250k      0 --:--:--  0:00:03 --:--:-- 1258k
1

With the 1 on the last row being the load %...

 

[bencehavran]

If you can grab your VPN server IP from the Merlin UI, you could run this statement from an SSH prompt, and see what message it gives you? Replace the IP in the statement below with your Nord VPN server IP.

echo $(curl --retry 3 --connect-timeout 3 --max-time 6 --retry-delay 1 --retry-all-errors https://api.nordvpn.com/server | jq --raw-output '.[] | select(.ip_address == "162.153.152.48") | .load')

It would give you output like this:

  % Total    % Received % Xferd  Average Speed   Time    Time     Time  Current
                                 Dload  Upload   Total   Spent    Left  Speed
100 4532k    0 4532k    0     0  1250k      0 --:--:--  0:00:03 --:--:-- 1258k
1

With the 1 on the last row being the load %...

here is the result:

...but after a couple of days, the R3 version is stable and working, so I'll stick with that, resolving the issue. Thank you.

 

[Viktor Jaep]

here is the result:

View attachment 54689

...but after a couple of days, the R3 version is stable and working, so I'll stick with that, resolving the issue. Thank you.

There's something wrong there because it's not returning a load %... either that was the incorrect IP, or for some reason, that particular server doesn't have this feature. R3 is a good choice, because it keeps it simple without all the VPN providers integrations.

 

[salvo]

One small thing, when I uninstalled R2 sciprt via vpnmon-r2 -config or vpnmon-r2 -setup (can't remember which one I used), the uninstall routine did remove the script itself (vpnmon-r2.sh file) but has not removed the R2 line from post-mount script.

This is file content after R2 unistall and R3 install

cat /jffs/scripts/post-mount
#!/bin/sh
. /jffs/addons/diversion/mount-entware.div # Added by amtm
(sleep 30 && /jffs/scripts/vpnmon-r2.sh -screen) & # Added by vpnmon-r2
(sleep 30 && /jffs/scripts/vpnmon-r3.sh -screen) & # Added by vpnmon-r3

 

[Viktor Jaep]

One small thing, when I uninstalled R2 sciprt via vpnmon-r2 -config or vpnmon-r2 -setup (can't remember which one I used), the uninstall routine did remove the script itself (vpnmon-r2.sh file) but has not removed the R2 line from post-mount script.

This is file content after R2 unistall and R3 install

cat /jffs/scripts/post-mount
#!/bin/sh
. /jffs/addons/diversion/mount-entware.div # Added by amtm
(sleep 30 && /jffs/scripts/vpnmon-r2.sh -screen) & # Added by vpnmon-r2
(sleep 30 && /jffs/scripts/vpnmon-r3.sh -screen) & # Added by vpnmon-r3

Nice catch... I'll make sure this is corrected in R2!

 

[Viktor Jaep]

NOTICE: Developing this script has been an absolute blast... but I'm discontinuing further development of VPNMON-R2 in favor of VPNMON-R3! Please upgrade at your convenience. Thanks to all those of you who have helped R2 become a solid VPN monitoring script -- I truly appreciate your support, your suggestions, your beta testing... you all rock!

What's new?
v2.64 - (January 25, 2024)
- MAJOR: I have made the difficult decision to sunset VPNMON-R2. After this version is made live, you will be prompted to consider upgrading to VPNMON-R3 when the script starts up. From the Setup Menu, you will see indicators that an in-place upgrade to R3 is available. The upgrade allows you to install VPNMON-R3 and keep VPNMON-R2 in place, or, you can install VPNMON-R3, and uninstall VPNMON-R2. You can continue running R2 as long as you want, but development/support will be shutting down in favor of R3. The R2 script will be removed from AMTM and replaced with R3. As of this version, new installs of VPNMON-R2 v2.64 won't be possible, and will recommend installation of VPNMON-R3. Thank you for all your support and encouragement throughout R2's run. It has been a wild ride! I hope R3 serves your needs and exceeds your expectations!
- FIXED: Thanks to @salvo for identifying that the post-mount entry was not getting deleted after a VPNMON-R2 uninstall. Fixed!

Download Link:

curl --retry 3 "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ViktorJp/VPNMON-R2/master/vpnmon-r2-2.64.sh" -o "/jffs/scripts/vpnmon-r2.sh" && chmod 755 "/jffs/scripts/vpnmon-r2.sh"

 

[Viktor Jaep]

Small fixes added today to assist with uninstall/future installs:

What's new?
v2.65 - (January 27, 2024)
- FIXED: Minor change for AMTM compliance purposes.

Download Link (or update directly within AMTM/VPNMON-R2):

curl --retry 3 "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ViktorJp/VPNMON-R2/master/vpnmon-r2-2.65.sh" -o "/jffs/scripts/vpnmon-r2.sh" && chmod 755 "/jffs/scripts/vpnmon-r2.sh"

 

[iTyPsIDg]

Hey Viktor,

I couldn't find a what's you gain/what you lose between R2 and R3. Do you have something like that somewhere so I can see what the significant differences are?

 

[Viktor Jaep]

Hey Viktor,

I couldn't find a what's you gain/what you lose between R2 and R3. Do you have something like that somewhere so I can see what the significant differences are?

What you lose:
- Built-in custom integrations with a few major VPN vendors
- IP lists were limited to an entire country
- Integration with Jack's VPNMGR script
- Skynet VPN server IP whitelisting (although, this is something I can easily bring over to R3)
- Only being able to monitor 1 VPN slot
- Certain VPN-provider-specific stats like load%
- Reset limited to only 1 VPN slot

What you gain:
- Freedom to craft your own VPN servers lists for each VPN slot using simple instructions
- Custom VPN Server IP lists that can scale from an entire country down to just a single city, or only recommended servers, and randomly chosen to connect to... the world is your oyster and free to customize this at will.
- If you don't want to use VPN Client Slot Server IP automation, you have access to edit your own list of preferred VPN server IPs/hostnames for each slot.
- Able to monitor up to 5 distinct VPN slots all at once
- Refreshing your custom VPN server IP lists on a -reset
- Ability to instantly reset any of the (up to) 5 VPN client slots, or stop/disable monitoring any of these with a single keystroke.
- A handy-dandy operations menu that you can quickly show/hide to get to hot key commands
- A new refreshed clean wide-screen layout showing WAN/Dual-WAN/VPN Client Slot info

 

[CaptainSTX]

The only thing I have noticed with VPMON-R3 is that my VPN tunnels seem to reset more often after you added function to adjust Ping Max to trigger a reset. I initially set the reset to 2X the length of the ping to of the most distant server. When this seemed to be resulting in more frequent resets ( every 1-3 days) I moved the timer back to 500 ms and still noticed the more frequent resets. Logs show the resets and I see time exceeded 500 ms yet when I have VPMON up and visible the ping times for the three servers normally show as 40, 15, 140. I tried changing the ping target (8.8.4.4) and that didn't make any difference. I don't know what you were using as a default value prior to adding the option to chose your own. These are just my observations.

The important thing is that the tunnels stay up and the app works very well so thanks again.

 

[Viktor Jaep]

The only thing I have noticed with VPMON-R3 is that my VPN tunnels seem to reset more often after you added function to adjust Ping Max to trigger a reset. I initially set the reset to 2X the length of the ping to of the most distant server. When this seemed to be resulting in more frequent resets ( every 1-3 days) I moved the timer back to 500 ms and still noticed the more frequent resets. Logs show the resets and I see time exceeded 500 ms yet when I have VPMON up and visible the ping times for the three servers normally show as 40, 15, 140. I tried changing the ping target (8.8.4.4) and that didn't make any difference. I don't know what you were using as a default value prior to adding the option to chose your own. These are just my observations.

The important thing is that the tunnels stay up and the app works very well so thanks again.

I think this comes down to a speed vs. accuracy tradeoff issue... For the sake of displaying all on-screen info quickly, I'm only shooting off 1 short ping to the host (VPNMON-R2 initially did the same thing), instead of doing multiple pings that would create more of an average. In certain instances, your connection, hardware, software, sunspots, you name it, will exhibit some random lag, making it jump higher than it normally would... I'm sure if a successive ping is run, you'd see a momentary small increase of sorts, and quickly drops back down to normal. So in that case, it would cause a reset. I've got mine pointing to 9.9.9.9 (quad9) and set for 500ms. I haven't seen a reset in weeks since changing it to that. Before, I had it set to 150ms, with my highest pings usually around the 70ms range... and I would see much more frequent resets for the same reason you are probably seeing them. I think keeping it at 500ms is a good failsafe, in case something does go bonkers on the VPN provider end, and let's you hopefully quickly recover to a faster server.