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Either I'm dumb or the guide on https://www.wireguard.com https://www.wireguard.com is awful. I have a VPS with StrongSwan installed, through which I connect w

Either I'm dumb or the guide on https://www.wireguard.com https://www.wireguard.com is awful. I have a VPS with StrongSwan installed, through which I connect when I need to access the internet with my server's IP. Basically, a poor sysadmin's VPN. I've heard of WireGuard, why not try it out? Now, the installation page seems pretty easy to follow, and I guess (though it's implied) WireGuard has to be installed on the server. Then the Quick Start page shows a list of routing commands, where am I supposed to run them? On the client or the server? Or, quote: wg set wg0 listen-port 51820 private-key /path/to/private-key peer ABCDEF... allowed-ips 192.168.88.0/24 endpoint 209.202.254.14:8172 What are those IPs? What's that private key file? How the heck do I install and use it? Also, the side-by-side demo doesn't load on my Safari. I'm fine RTFM and man pages, but I don't see the point of a quick start guide if it's totally cryptic for anyone that has never used WireGuard. Just tell me to RTFM and I won't bother with this guide. I guess I'll keep my StrongSwan installation, has been working without a hitch for a while now.

zx2c4 9y ago
Thanks for the feedback. Indeed there are the wg(8) and wg-quick(8) man pages, and probably you should read the whole _front page_ of wireguard.com, namely this part -- https://www.wireguard.com/#conceptual-overview https://www.wireguard.com/#conceptual-overview -- which gives some important conceptual overviews to learn what's going on. Probably if you don't have the conceptual overview in mind, the quickstart won't make much sense; this may indeed be a fault in the writing presumptions of the quickstart. The side-by-side video puts this -- https://www.wireguard.com/talks/talk-demo-screencast.mp4 https://www.wireguard.com/talks/talk-demo-screencast.mp4 -- in a <video> tag. I'm a kernel developer, not a web developer, so if you have a suggestion on how to fix it in your browser, I'm all ears. With all that said, we probably should rewrite the quickstart page to be a little more intuitive and "quicker", so that people can get an idea of what to do without having to understand or think about anything... Maybe a better approach for that might be: "Here's what you do on one side. Here's what you do on the other side." In any case, I guarantee that learning WireGuard is faster and simpler than learning StrongSwan or any IPsec things. After the Netdev conference, which is next week, I'll allocate some time to improving documentation. Thanks for the feedback here, and sorry for the frustration.
- hamandcheese 9y ago
  Is the website open source? Do you accept contributions?
  - zx2c4 9y ago
    Not open source, but I should probably clean things up and make it open source. It's just a bunch of markdown files that get rendered. I do accept contributions, though.
- 1_player 9y ago
  Thanks, I hope I've given you some constructive criticism and wasn't too harsh. I'm really interested, I hoped it was something I could install quickly and easily at 10pm before bed, I guess I'll study it better during the weekend and compare it against StrongSwan.
- 1_player 9y ago
  BTW, Firefox says the video is corrupt, Safari doesn't play it, only Chrome does. Probably a couple bits rotted since you've recorded it :)
  - zx2c4 9y ago
    Jeepers creepers. I'll try to fix it. Probably a yuv444p issue. Update: fixed now. I had to re-encode it to change the colorspace, as suspected, and now things should be working fine in Firefox (though I haven't a Mac to test Safari).
    - AceJohnny2 9y ago
      Video works on Safari 10.1.1 (macOS 10.12.5) :)
    - zie 9y ago
      It works on Safari 11.0 as well(source: me). Thanks for fixing it!
countryslicker 9y ago
I struggled with understanding it, too. Even after reading all the docs, I didn't catch on. So I hopped on irc and the next thing I know, the author patiently walked me through each obvious step. He wasn't condescending, but the whole thing goes together so simply that I felt pretty stupid about not getting it on my own. There are nice people (including the author) on irc who are very patient with people who need help grasping the obvious. This product is drop-dead simple. Part of my problem was that I was expecting it to be much more complicated. Major kudos to the team.
ryanqian 9y ago
Wireguard quick start guide need to be better.
blacksmith_tb 9y ago
My lazy sysadmin apporach to getting Wireguard running on a VPS is to use Streisand[1]. 1: https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand#services-provided https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand#services-provid...
- aorth 9y ago
  Wow, that's great! I didn't know that Streisand supported Wireguard. Thanks for pointing that out.
vfulco 9y ago
So agree here but I was a liberal arts major so thought it was just me.

zx2c4 9y ago

Thanks for the feedback. Indeed there are the wg(8) and wg-quick(8) man pages, and probably you should read the whole _front page_ of wireguard.com, namely this part -- https://www.wireguard.com/#conceptual-overview https://www.wireguard.com/#conceptual-overview -- which gives some important conceptual overviews to learn what's going on. Probably if you don't have the conceptual overview in mind, the quickstart won't make much sense; this may indeed be a fault in the writing presumptions of the quickstart. The side-by-side video puts this -- https://www.wireguard.com/talks/talk-demo-screencast.mp4 https://www.wireguard.com/talks/talk-demo-screencast.mp4 -- in a <video> tag. I'm a kernel developer, not a web developer, so if you have a suggestion on how to fix it in your browser, I'm all ears. With all that said, we probably should rewrite the quickstart page to be a little more intuitive and "quicker", so that people can get an idea of what to do without having to understand or think about anything... Maybe a better approach for that might be: "Here's what you do on one side. Here's what you do on the other side." In any case, I guarantee that learning WireGuard is faster and simpler than learning StrongSwan or any IPsec things. After the Netdev conference, which is next week, I'll allocate some time to improving documentation. Thanks for the feedback here, and sorry for the frustration.

hamandcheese 9y ago
Is the website open source? Do you accept contributions?
- zx2c4 9y ago
  Not open source, but I should probably clean things up and make it open source. It's just a bunch of markdown files that get rendered. I do accept contributions, though.
1_player 9y ago
Thanks, I hope I've given you some constructive criticism and wasn't too harsh. I'm really interested, I hoped it was something I could install quickly and easily at 10pm before bed, I guess I'll study it better during the weekend and compare it against StrongSwan.
1_player 9y ago
BTW, Firefox says the video is corrupt, Safari doesn't play it, only Chrome does. Probably a couple bits rotted since you've recorded it :)
- zx2c4 9y ago
  Jeepers creepers. I'll try to fix it. Probably a yuv444p issue. Update: fixed now. I had to re-encode it to change the colorspace, as suspected, and now things should be working fine in Firefox (though I haven't a Mac to test Safari).
  - AceJohnny2 9y ago
    Video works on Safari 10.1.1 (macOS 10.12.5) :)
  - zie 9y ago
    It works on Safari 11.0 as well(source: me). Thanks for fixing it!

countryslicker 9y ago

I struggled with understanding it, too. Even after reading all the docs, I didn't catch on. So I hopped on irc and the next thing I know, the author patiently walked me through each obvious step. He wasn't condescending, but the whole thing goes together so simply that I felt pretty stupid about not getting it on my own. There are nice people (including the author) on irc who are very patient with people who need help grasping the obvious. This product is drop-dead simple. Part of my problem was that I was expecting it to be much more complicated. Major kudos to the team.

ryanqian 9y ago

Wireguard quick start guide need to be better.

blacksmith_tb 9y ago

My lazy sysadmin apporach to getting Wireguard running on a VPS is to use Streisand[1]. 1: https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand#services-provided https://github.com/StreisandEffect/streisand#services-provid...

aorth 9y ago
Wow, that's great! I didn't know that Streisand supported Wireguard. Thanks for pointing that out.

vfulco 9y ago

So agree here but I was a liberal arts major so thought it was just me.