HamachiVPN

Hamachi VPN for Palm Pre

This document assumes you're familiar with the Hamachi VPN, specifically the linux version. It is geared towards a person wanting to "get it working" on the Pre. If you're not familiar, there are endless Googlable web pages that describe running Hamachi on desktop linux systems you can use for reference.

Become root:

<source lang="text"> sudo su </source>

Make the filesystem writable:

<source lang="text"> mount -o remount,rw / </source>

Download the hamachi binary to your pre via wget: <source lang="text"> cd /opt/share wget http://files.hamachi.cc/linux/hamachi-0.9.9.9-20-lnx.tar.gz </source>

Unpack the archive: <source lang="text"> tar zxvf hamachi-0.9.9.9-20-lnx-n770.tar.gz cd hamachi-n770-0.9.9.9-20 </source>

Hamachi depends on libcrypto.so.0.9.7. The Palm Pre has libcrypto.so.0.9.8 installed. I made a symlink, and it worked. So... <source lang="text"> ln -s /usr/lib/libcrypto.so.0.9.8 /usr/lib/libcrypto.so.0.9.7 </source>

Edit the "install" script using your favorite editor (like vi) to change the installation locations. Also fix line 7 or you'll get an error.

I changed it to:

<source lang="text"> HAMACHI_DST=/opt/bin TUNCFG_DST=/opt/sbin

echo echo Copying hamachi into $HAMACHI_DST .. </source>

Then follow the instructions in the README under Quick Start, but basically:

<source lang="text"> ./install /opt/sbin/tuncfg hamachi-init hamachi start hamachi login hamachi set-nick <your nickname> hamachi join <network> hamachi go-online </source>

Hint

If you use Hamachi to connect to web services running on your machines at home or elsewhere, you might make your life easier by adding some entries to the /etc/hosts file. Then you can access your servers by name instead of having to use the Hamachi 5.x.x.x IP addresses.

A simple sample entry in /etc/hosts which would allow you to access your server "beaker" at 5.1.2.3 would be: (Add your servers below the "castle" line.) <source lang="text"> 127.0.0.1 localhost.localdomain localhost 127.0.0.1 castle 5.1.2.3 beaker </source>

When done, make the filesystem read-only again: <source lang="text"> mount -o remount,ro / </source>

Ping Test

When you've got hamachi up, you can try pinging one of your servers. <source lang="text"> root@castle:/var/home/root# ping beaker PING beaker (5.1.2.3): 56 data bytes 64 bytes from 5.1.2.3: seq=0 ttl=128 time=5.493 ms 64 bytes from 5.1.2.3: seq=1 ttl=128 time=32.257 ms 64 bytes from 5.1.2.3: seq=2 ttl=128 time=56.976 ms 64 bytes from 5.1.2.3: seq=3 ttl=128 time=74.249 ms </source>

Sleep/Wake and Battery Impact

On first testing:

• When the device went to sleep, the VPN went down.
• When the device woke up, the VPN came back up and was pingable again.

This morning, while at my workstation, and with the Pre idle in my pocket, I noticed my Pre was available/pingable on Hamachi. I am not totally sure of what the long-term battery impact might be of running Hamachi on the Pre. I'm not yet sure if it keeps the device "awake" all the time, which clearly would drain the battery. I have push GMail IMAP going, so I assume there is some kind of connection either being periodically established or constantly maintained. But I don't know enough about the networking aspects to determine at this time whether running Hamachi all the time will negatively impact the battery. Feel free to message me if you learn anything.

Upstart script

This script will start Hamachi up after a reboot.

Place the following script in /etc/event.d/hamachi

<source lang="text"> description "Hamachi VPN for WebOS" version 1.0

1. don't start until the WebOS finishes it's normal boot
2. that way no delay is added to the GUI startup

start on stopped finish stop on runlevel [!2]

console output

script

 /opt/bin/hamachi -c /var/home/root/.hamachi start 2>&1 /var/home/root/hamachi.log

end script

pre-start script

 /opt/sbin/tuncfg

end script </source>