ZeroTier Review

WingCreative

Thanks for writing this up, I just learned about them this week myself and have been trying to think of a good project to test it out with! Glad to hear it seems to work as well as they say it does.

dafyre

@WingCreative If you are just going to use it for you or if you are certain it won't go over 10 devices, use their website... Unless you really just want to tinker.

scottalanmiller

It's amazing how quickly you can go over ten devices!

scottalanmiller

What end point platforms does it work on?

dafyre

To connect as devices, it runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux. There's an Android device in the works.

For the controllers, I'm not sure. You do have to compile it yourself if you want to run a controller, so I know that the controller bits work at least on Ubuntu 14.04.

scottalanmiller

No FreeBSD? No Solaris?

dafyre

Packages are available for Windows 7 , Mac OS, and Linux .

If you want to use FreeBSD, then you'll need to compile it yourself. I see nothing about Solaris on their site, though.

scottalanmiller

Not even Windows servers or the last three versions? Is the project still current?

dafyre

@scottalanmiller lol. Windows 7 and up. (Keep commenting, and I'll keep editing the post, lol).

scottalanmiller

Oh that is a bit better.

dafyre

And very much a current project, lol. I got help with an issue via the Github Issue tracker, lol. And got emails from them about screenshotting for the write up.

dafyre

See updates above... Client-To-Site VPN is now working... sadly, I don't have a second site that I could hijack ^W use for testing... Yet. I feel a visit to family coming on, lol.

stacksofplates

I must be dense. To set up the controller you compile the same zerotierone package but pass make ZT_ENABLE_NETWORK_CONTROLLER=1 first?

dafyre

@johnhooks Yeah. When you build it with the controller enabled, it also builds the client too, so there's just one install to manage... I just discovered a shortcut to the rigamarole I went through before to initially get the installer...

cd /path/to/ztsource
make ZT_ENABLE_NETWORK_CONTROLLER=1 installer

Will correctly build the controller bits in, as well as generate the installer script.

sudo ./ZeroTierOneInstaller-linux-x64-1_0_5

Will install it in /var/lib/zerotier-one, and install the init.d files (or the systemd files, whatever the going rate is these days)...

You can check to see if you have the controller in stalled correctly by doing this:

root@yourserver:~# zerotier-cli /controller
{
        "controller": true,
        "apiVersion": 1,
        "clock": 1441048250252,
        "instanceId": "#####################"
}

If it is installed correctly with the controller bits enabled, it should look like that.

If it did not install with the controller bits, then you'll get a 404 error.

stacksofplates

@dafyre Thanks!

dafyre

Hey @johnhooks ,

Havae you tried to get the Site-To-Site working yet?

stacksofplates

@dafyre said:

Hey @johnhooks ,

Havae you tried to get the Site-To-Site working yet?

I got everything installed, but I got stuck at creating a network haha.

dafyre

Yeah, I never did get that part to work using the shell... so I cheated a little and did it with PHP for creating the network, and I did get a bash script written for authorizing the clients. These scripts need to be in /var/lib/zerotierone.

Sadly, it won't let me upload text files, so here's a link to the PHP Script (it is a text file, so my server won't execute it, lol)

https://beta.wellston.biz/ztCreateNetwork.txt

After you get that done, it will create a network. In the ZeroTier client, copy and paste the network ID (it will show it to you after the network is created, or you can get the Network's ID by:

root@yourserver:~#zerotier-cli /controller/network

After you successfully join a client to the network, you will need to authorize the client before it is issued an IP address (Shell Script here): https://beta.wellston.biz/ztAuth.txt

The first is the Network ID (the full 16 digit network id), and the second is the client id. (You can locate the client id in the bottom left of the interface if you are using the gui). If you are trying to connect from a non-gui Linux install, you can run zerotier-cli info again, and it will return your client's ID...

root@yourclient:~#zerotier-cli info
200 info <your id here> ONLINE 1.0.5

To authorize the client it would be:

root@yourserver:/var/lib/zerotier-one# ./ztAuth <networkid> <client id>

It should spit out a blurb of text. Just check and make sure Authorized=true, and you should be good to go. I would recommend getting a couple of clients working from within the ZeroTier IP addresses before trying to get them to do Client-To-Site.

stacksofplates

That's awesome. Thanks so much! I'll give this a shot when I get some time today. I'm glad it wasn't just me that couldn't get it through the cli, I think their ReadMe's need some more direction.

dafyre

@johnhooks Very much so, lol. I think they have an admin bit in the works, but I'm not sure if it will be part of the client package or a separate download or what they are going to do with it yet.