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IPsec VPN server on Docker, with both IPsec/L2TP and Cisco IPsec

IPsec VPN Server on Docker

Set up your own IPsec VPN server on Docker, with support for both IPsec/L2TP and IPsec/XAuth ("Cisco IPsec").

Based on Debian Jessie with Libreswan (IPsec VPN software) and xl2tpd (L2TP daemon).

Available on Docker Hub.

Download

docker pull hwdsl2/ipsec-vpn-server

How to use this image

Environment variables

This Docker image uses the following three environment variables, that can be declared in an env file:

VPN_IPSEC_PSK=<IPsec pre-shared key>
VPN_USER=<VPN Username>
VPN_PASSWORD=<VPN Password>

This will create a single user account for VPN login. The IPsec PSK (pre-shared key) is specified by the VPN_IPSEC_PSK environment variable. The VPN username is defined in VPN_USER, and VPN password is specified by VPN_PASSWORD.

Note: In your env file, DO NOT put single or double quotes around values, or add space around =.

All the variables to this image are optional, which means you don't have to type in any environment variables, and you can have an IPsec VPN server out of the box! Read the sections below for details.

Start the IPsec VPN server

First, run sudo modprobe af_key on the host to load the IPsec NETKEY kernel module.

Start your Docker container with the following command (replace ./vpn.env with your own env file) :

docker run \
    --name docker-ipsec-vpn-server \
    --env-file ./vpn.env \
    -p 500:500/udp \
    -p 4500:4500/udp \
    -v /lib/modules:/lib/modules:ro \
    -d --privileged \
    hwdsl2/ipsec-vpn-server

Retrieve VPN login details

If you did not set environment variables via an env file, VPN_USER will default to vpnuser and both VPN_IPSEC_PSK and VPN_PASSWORD will be randomly generated. To retrieve them, show the logs of the running container:

docker logs docker-ipsec-vpn-server

Search for these lines in the output:

Connect to your new VPN with these details:

Server IP: <VPN Server IP>
IPsec PSK: <IPsec pre-shared key>
Username: <VPN Username>
Password: <VPN Password>

Check server status

To check the status of your IPsec VPN server, you can pass ipsec status to your container like this :

docker exec -it docker-ipsec-vpn-server ipsec status

Next Steps

Get your computer or device to use the VPN. Please refer to:

Configure IPsec/L2TP VPN Clients
Configure IPsec/XAuth VPN Clients

Enjoy your very own VPN! ✨🎉🚀✨

Services Running

There are two services running: Libreswan (pluto) for the IPsec VPN, and xl2tpd for L2TP support.

The default IPsec configuration supports:

• IKEv1 with PSK and XAuth ("Cisco IPSec")
• IPsec/L2TP with PSK

The ports that are exposed for this container to work are:

• 4500/udp and 500/udp for IPsec

See Also

• IPsec VPN Server on Ubuntu, Debian and CentOS
• IKEv2 VPN Server on Docker

Author

Lin Song

• Final year U.S. PhD candidate, majoring in Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE)
• Actively seeking opportunities in areas such as Software or Systems Engineering
• Contact me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/linsongui

License

Copyright (C) 2016 Lin Song   
Based on the work of Thomas Sarlandie (Copyright 2012)

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License
Attribution required: please include my name in any derivative and let me know how you have improved it!