The solution has been found, see the “Solution” section for the full write up and config files.

Initial Question

What I’m looking to do is to route WAN traffic from my personal wireguard server through a gluetun container. So that I can connect a client my personal wireguard server and have my traffic still go through the gluetun VPN as follows:

client <–> wireguard container <–> gluetun container <–> WAN

I’ve managed to set both the wireguard and gluetun container up in a docker-compose file and made sure they both work independently (I can connect a client the the wireguard container and the gluetun container is successfully connecting to my paid VPN for WAN access). However, I cannot get route traffic from the wireguard container through the gluetun container.

Since I’ve managed to set both up independently I don’t believe that there is an issue with the docker-compose file I used for setup. What I believe to be the issue is either the routing rules in my wireguard container, or the firewall rules on the gluetun container.

I tried following this linuxserver.io guide to get the following wg0.conf template for my wireguard container:

[Interface]
Address = ${INTERFACE}.1
ListenPort = 51820
PrivateKey = $(cat /config/server/privatekey-server)
PostUp = iptables -A FORWARD -i %i -j ACCEPT; iptables -A FORWARD -o %i -j ACCEPT; iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth+ -j MASQUERADE
# Adds fwmark 51820 to any packet traveling through interface wg0
PostUp = wg set wg0 fwmark 51820
# If a packet is not marked with fwmark 51820 (not coming through the wg connection) it will be routed to the table "51820".
# PostUp = ip -4 rule add not fwmark 51820 table 51820
# Creates a table ("51820") which routes all traffic through the gluetun container
PostUp = ip -4 route add 0.0.0.0/0 via 172.22.0.100
# If the traffic is destined for the subnet 192.168.1.0/24 (internal) send it through the default gateway.
PostUp = ip -4 route add 192.168.1.0/24 via 172.22.0.1
PostDown = iptables -D FORWARD -i %i -j ACCEPT; iptables -D FORWARD -o %i -j ACCEPT; iptables -t nat -D POSTROUTING -o eth+ -j MASQUERADE

Along with the default firewall rules of the gluetun container

Chain INPUT (policy DROP 13 packets, 1062 bytes)
 pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination
15170 1115K ACCEPT     0    --  lo     *       0.0.0.0/0            0.0.0.0/0
14403   12M ACCEPT     0    --  *      *       0.0.0.0/0            0.0.0.0/0            ctstate RELATED,ESTABLISHED
    1    60 ACCEPT     0    --  eth0   *       0.0.0.0/0            172.22.0.0/24

Chain FORWARD (policy DROP 4880 packets, 396K bytes)
 pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination

Chain OUTPUT (policy DROP 360 packets, 25560 bytes)
 pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination
15170 1115K ACCEPT     0    --  *      lo      0.0.0.0/0            0.0.0.0/0
12716 1320K ACCEPT     0    --  *      *       0.0.0.0/0            0.0.0.0/0            ctstate RELATED,ESTABLISHED
    0     0 ACCEPT     0    --  *      eth0    172.22.0.100         172.22.0.0/24
    1   176 ACCEPT     17   --  *      eth0    0.0.0.0/0            68.235.48.107        udp dpt:1637
 1349 81068 ACCEPT     0    --  *      tun0    0.0.0.0/0            0.0.0.0/0

When I run the wireguard container with this configuration I can successfully connect my client however I cannot connect to any website, or ping any IP.

During my debugging process I ran tcpdump on the docker network both containers are in which showed me that my client is successfully sending packets to the wireguard container, but that no packets were sent from my wireguard container to the gluetun container. The closest I got to this was the following line:

17:27:38.871259 IP 10.13.13.1.domain > 10.13.13.2.41280: 42269 ServFail- 0/0/0 (28)

Which I believe is telling me that the wireguard server is trying, and failing, to send packets back to the client.

I also checked the firewall rules of the gluetun container and got the following results:

Chain INPUT (policy DROP 13 packets, 1062 bytes)
 pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination
18732 1376K ACCEPT     0    --  lo     *       0.0.0.0/0            0.0.0.0/0
16056   12M ACCEPT     0    --  *      *       0.0.0.0/0            0.0.0.0/0            ctstate RELATED,ESTABLISHED
    1    60 ACCEPT     0    --  eth0   *       0.0.0.0/0            172.22.0.0/24

Chain FORWARD (policy DROP 5386 packets, 458K bytes)
 pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination

Chain OUTPUT (policy DROP 360 packets, 25560 bytes)
 pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination
18732 1376K ACCEPT     0    --  *      lo      0.0.0.0/0            0.0.0.0/0
14929 1527K ACCEPT     0    --  *      *       0.0.0.0/0            0.0.0.0/0            ctstate RELATED,ESTABLISHED
    0     0 ACCEPT     0    --  *      eth0    172.22.0.100         172.22.0.0/24
    1   176 ACCEPT     17   --  *      eth0    0.0.0.0/0            68.235.48.107        udp dpt:1637
 1660 99728 ACCEPT     0    --  *      tun0    0.0.0.0/0            0.0.0.0/0

Which shows that the firewall for the gluetun container is dropping all FORWARD traffic which (as I understand it) is the sort of traffic I’m trying to set up. What is odd is that I don’t see any of those packets in the tcpdump of the docker network.

Has anyone successfully set this up or have any indication on what I should try next? At this point any ideas would be helpful, whether that be more debugging steps or recommendations for routing/firewall rules.

While there have been similar posts on this topic (Here and Here) the responses on both did not really help me.


Solution

Docker Compose Setup

My final working setup uses the following docker-compose file:

networks:
  default:
    ipam:
      config:
        - subnet: 172.22.0.0/24
services:
  gluetun_vpn:
    image: qmcgaw/gluetun:latest
    container_name: gluetun_vpn
    cap_add:
      - NET_ADMIN # Required
    environment:
      - VPN_TYPE=wireguard # I tested this with a wireguard setup
      # Setup Gluetun depending on your provider.
    volumes:
      - {docker config path}/gluetun_vpn/conf:/gluetun
      - {docker config path}/gluetun_vpn/firewall:/iptables
    sysctls:
      # Disables ipv6
      - net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6=1
    restart: unless-stopped
    networks:
      default:
        ipv4_address: 172.22.0.100
  wireguard_server:
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/wireguard:latest
    container_name: wg_server
    cap_add:
      - NET_ADMIN
    environment:
      - TZ=America/Detroit
      - PEERS=1
      - SERVERPORT=3697 # Optional
      - PEERDNS=172.22.0.100 # Set this as the Docker network IP of the gluetun container to use your vpn's dns resolver
    ports:
      - 3697:51820/udp # Optional
    volumes:
      - {docker config path}/wg_server/conf:/config
    sysctls:
      - net.ipv4.conf.all.src_valid_mark=1
    networks:
      default:
        ipv4_address: 172.22.0.2
    restart: unless-stopped

Once you get both docker containers working you still need to edit some configuration files.

Wireguard Server Setup

After the wireguard container setup you need to edit {docker config path}/wg_server/conf/templates/server.conf to the following:

[Interface]
Address = ${INTERFACE}.1
ListenPort = 51820
PrivateKey = $(cat /config/server/privatekey-server)

# Default from the wg container
PostUp = iptables -A FORWARD -i %i -j ACCEPT; iptables -A FORWARD -o %i -j ACCEPT; iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth+ -j MASQUERADE

## Add this section
# Adds fwmark 51820 to any packet traveling through interface wg0
PostUp = wg set wg0 fwmark 51820
# If a packet is not marked with fwmark 51820 (not coming through the wg connection) it will be routed to the table "51820".
PostUp = ip -4 rule add not fwmark 51820 table 51820
PostUp = ip -4 rule add table main suppress_prefixlength 0
# Creates a table ("51820") which routes all traffic through the vpn container
PostUp = ip -4 route add 0.0.0.0/0 via 172.22.0.100 table 51820
# If the traffic is destined for the subnet 192.168.1.0/24 (internal) send it through the default gateway.
PostUp = ip -4 route add 192.168.1.0/24 via 172.22.0.1

# Default from the wg container
PostDown = iptables -D FORWARD -i %i -j ACCEPT; iptables -D FORWARD -o %i -j ACCEPT; iptables -t nat -D POSTROUTING -o eth+ -j MASQUERADE

The above config is a slightly modified setup from this linuxserver.io tutorial

Gluetun Setup

If you’ve setup your gluetun container properly the only thing you have to do is create {docker config path}/gluetun_vpn/firewall/post-rules.txt containing the following:

iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o tun+ -j MASQUERADE
iptables -t filter -A FORWARD -d 172.22.0.2 -j ACCEPT
iptables -t filter -A FORWARD -s 172.22.0.2 -j ACCEPT

These commands should be automatically run once you restart the gluetun container. You can test the setup by running iptables-legacy -vL -t filter from within the gluetun container. Your output should look like:

Chain INPUT (policy DROP 7 packets, 444 bytes)
 pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination
27512 2021K ACCEPT     all  --  lo     any     anywhere             anywhere
43257   24M ACCEPT     all  --  any    any     anywhere             anywhere             ctstate RELATED,ESTABLISHED
  291 28191 ACCEPT     all  --  eth0   any     anywhere             172.22.0.0/24

# These are the important rules
Chain FORWARD (policy DROP 12276 packets, 2476K bytes)
 pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination
17202 8839K ACCEPT     all  --  any    any     anywhere             172.22.0.2
26704 5270K ACCEPT     all  --  any    any     172.22.0.2           anywhere

Chain OUTPUT (policy DROP 42 packets, 2982 bytes)
 pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination
27512 2021K ACCEPT     all  --  any    lo      anywhere             anywhere
53625 9796K ACCEPT     all  --  any    any     anywhere             anywhere             ctstate RELATED,ESTABLISHED
    0     0 ACCEPT     all  --  any    eth0    c6d5846467f3         172.22.0.0/24
    1   176 ACCEPT     udp  --  any    eth0    anywhere             64.42.179.50         udp dpt:1637
 2463  148K ACCEPT     all  --  any    tun0    anywhere             anywhere

And iptables-legacy -vL -t nat which should look like:

Chain PREROUTING (policy ACCEPT 18779 packets, 2957K bytes)
 pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination

Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT 291 packets, 28191 bytes)
 pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination

Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT 7212 packets, 460K bytes)
 pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination

# This is the important rule
Chain POSTROUTING (policy ACCEPT 4718 packets, 310K bytes)
 pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination
13677  916K MASQUERADE  all  --  any    tun+    anywhere             anywhere

The commands in post-rules.txt are a more precises version of @CumBroth@discuss.tchncs.de solution in the comments.

  • CumBroth@discuss.tchncs.de
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    5 months ago

    Gluetun likely doesn’t have the proper firewall rules in place to enable this sort of traffic routing, simply because it’s made for another use case (using the container’s network stack directly with network_mode: "service:gluetun").

    Try to first get this setup working with two vanilla Wireguard containers (instead of Wireguard + gluetun). If it does, you’ll know that your Wireguard “server” container is properly set up. Then replace the second container that’s acting as a VPN client with gluetun and run tcpdump again. You likely need to add a postrouting masquerade rule on the NAT table.

    Here’s my own working setup for reference.

    Wireguard “server” container:

    [Interface]
    Address = <address>
    ListenPort = 51820
    PrivateKey = <privateKey>
    PostUp = iptables -A FORWARD -i %i -j ACCEPT; iptables -A FORWARD -o %i -j ACCEPT; iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE
    PostUp = wg set wg0 fwmark 51820
    PostUp = ip -4 route add 0.0.0.0/0 via 172.22.0.101 table 51820
    PostUp = ip -4 rule add not fwmark 51820 table 51820
    PostUp = ip -4 rule add table main suppress_prefixlength 0
    PostUp = ip route add 192.168.16.0/24 via 172.22.0.1
    PostDown = iptables -D FORWARD -i %i -j ACCEPT; iptables -D FORWARD -o %i -j ACCEPT; iptables -t nat -D POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE; ip route del 192.168.16.0/24 via 172.22.0.1
    
    #peer configurations (clients) go here
    

    and the Wireguard VPN client that I route traffic through:

    # Based on my VPN provider's configuration + additional firewall rules to route traffic correctly
    [Interface]
    PrivateKey = <key>
    Address = <address>
    DNS = 192.168.16.81 # local Adguard
    PostUp = iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o wg+ -j MASQUERADE #Route traffic coming in from outside the container (host/other container)
    PreDown = iptables -t nat -D POSTROUTING -o wg+ -j MASQUERADE
    
    [Peer]
    PublicKey = <key>
    AllowedIPs = 0.0.0.0/0
    Endpoint = <endpoint_IP>:51820
    

    Note the NAT MASQUERADE rule.

    • scapeg0at@midwest.socialOP
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      5 months ago

      Thank you for the reply! I’ve been busy the last couple of days so I just got around to looking back at this.

      I tested out your advice and setup a wireguard container with the MASQUERADE NAT rule and it worked! However, when I tried it out again with the gluetun container. I’m still running into issues, but there is progress!

      With my setup before when I connect my client to the wireguard network I would get a “no network” error. Now when I try access the internet the connection times out. Still not ideal, but at least it’s a different error than before!

      With the MASQUERADE NAT rule in place, running tcpdump on the docker network shows that at least the two containers are talking to each other:

      17:04:29.927415 IP 172.22.0.2 > 172.22.0.100: ICMP echo request, id 4, seq 9823, length 64
      17:04:29.927466 IP 172.22.0.100 > 172.22.0.2: ICMP echo reply, id 4, seq 9823, length 64
      

      but I still cannot get any internet access through the wireguard tunnel.

      When exploring around the gluetun config I confirmed that the MASQUERADE rule was actually set:

      Chain PREROUTING (policy ACCEPT 2933 packets, 316K bytes)
       pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination
      
      Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT 839 packets, 86643 bytes)
       pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination
      
      Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT 12235 packets, 741K bytes)
       pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination
      
      Chain POSTROUTING (policy ACCEPT 11408 packets, 687K bytes)
       pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination
       2921  284K MASQUERADE  0    --  *      eth+    0.0.0.0/0            0.0.0.0/0
      

      I think that the issue may be the default firewall rules of the gluetun block all traffic besides the VPN traffic via the main iptable:

      Chain INPUT (policy DROP 0 packets, 0 bytes)
       pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination
       2236  164K ACCEPT     0    --  lo     *       0.0.0.0/0            0.0.0.0/0
      11914   12M ACCEPT     0    --  *      *       0.0.0.0/0            0.0.0.0/0            ctstate RELATED,ESTABLISHED
         87 15792 ACCEPT     0    --  eth0   *       0.0.0.0/0            172.22.0.0/24
      
      Chain FORWARD (policy DROP 381 packets, 22780 bytes)
       pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination
      
      Chain OUTPUT (policy DROP 76 packets, 5396 bytes)
       pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination
       2236  164K ACCEPT     0    --  *      lo      0.0.0.0/0            0.0.0.0/0
       8152  872K ACCEPT     0    --  *      *       0.0.0.0/0            0.0.0.0/0            ctstate RELATED,ESTABLISHED
          0     0 ACCEPT     0    --  *      eth0    172.22.0.100         172.22.0.0/24
          1   176 ACCEPT     17   --  *      eth0    0.0.0.0/0            213.152.187.229      udp dpt:1637
        212 12843 ACCEPT     0    --  *      tun0    0.0.0.0/0            0.0.0.0/0
      

      I tried adding simple iptables rules such as iptables -A FORWARD -i tun+ -j ACCEPT (and the same with eth+ as the interface) but with no luck.

      If you think you can help I’ll be down to try out other solutions, or if you need more information I can post it when I have time. If you don’t think this will be an easy fix I can revert back to the wireguard-wireguard container setup since that worked. I tried to get this setup working so I could leverage the gluetun kill-switch/restart.

      • CumBroth@discuss.tchncs.de
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        5 months ago

        I think you already have a kill-switch (of sorts) in place with the two Wireguard container setup, since your clients lose internet access (except to the local network, since there’s a separate route for that on the Wireguard “server” container") if any of the following happens:

        • “Client” container is spun down
        • The Wireguard interface inside the “client” container is spun down (you can try this out by execing wg-quick down wg0 inside the container)
        • or even if the interface is up but the VPN connection is down (try changing the endpoint IP to a random one instead of the correct one provided by your VPN service provider)

        I can’t be 100% sure, because I’m not a networking expert, but this seems like enough of a “kill-switch” to me. I’m not sure what you mean by leveraging the restart. One of the things that I found annoying about the Gluetun approach is that I would have to restart every container that depends on its network stack if Gluetun itself got restarted/updated.

        But anyway, I went ahead and messed around on a VPS with the Wireguard+Gluetun approach and I got it working. I am using the latest versions of The Linuxserver.io Wireguard container and Gluetun at the time of writing. There are two things missing in the Gluetun firewall configuration you posted:

        • A MASQUERADE rule on the tunnel, meaning the tun0 interface.
        • Gluetun is configured to drop all FORWARD packets (filter table) by default. You’ll have to change that chain rule to ACCEPT. Again, I’m not a networking expert, so I’m not sure whether or not this compromises the kill-switch in any way, at least in any way that’s relevant to the desired setup/behavior. You could potentially set a more restrictive rule to only allow traffic coming in from <wireguard_container_IP>, but I’ll leave that up to you. You’ll also need to figure out the best way to persist the rules through container restarts.

        First, here’s the docker compose setup I used:

        networks:
          wghomenet:
            name: wghomenet
            ipam:
              config:
                - subnet: 172.22.0.0/24
                  gateway: 172.22.0.1
        
        services:
          gluetun:
            image: qmcgaw/gluetun
            container_name: gluetun
            cap_add:
              - NET_ADMIN
            devices:
              - /dev/net/tun:/dev/net/tun
            ports:
              - 8888:8888/tcp # HTTP proxy
              - 8388:8388/tcp # Shadowsocks
              - 8388:8388/udp # Shadowsocks
            volumes:
              - ./config:/gluetun
            environment:
              - VPN_SERVICE_PROVIDER=<your stuff here>
              - VPN_TYPE=wireguard
              # - WIREGUARD_PRIVATE_KEY=<your stuff here>
              # - WIREGUARD_PRESHARED_KEY=<your stuff here>
              # - WIREGUARD_ADDRESSES=<your stuff here>
              # - SERVER_COUNTRIES=<your stuff here>
              # Timezone for accurate log times
              - TZ= <your stuff here>
              # Server list updater
              # See https://github.com/qdm12/gluetun-wiki/blob/main/setup/servers.md#update-the-vpn-servers-list
              - UPDATER_PERIOD=24h
            sysctls:
              - net.ipv4.conf.all.src_valid_mark=1
            networks:
              wghomenet:
                ipv4_address: 172.22.0.101
        
          wireguard-server:
            image: lscr.io/linuxserver/wireguard
            container_name: wireguard-server
            cap_add:
              - NET_ADMIN
            environment:
              - PUID=1000
              - PGID=1001
              - TZ=<your stuff here>
              - INTERNAL_SUBNET=10.13.13.0
              - PEERS=chromebook
            volumes:
              - ./config/wg-server:/config
              - /lib/modules:/lib/modules #optional
            restart: always
            ports:
              - 51820:51820/udp
            networks:
              wghomenet:
                ipv4_address: 172.22.0.5
            sysctls:
              - net.ipv4.conf.all.src_valid_mark=1
        

        You already have your “server” container properly configured. Now for Gluetun: I exec into the container docker exec -it gluetun sh. Then I set the MASQUERADE rule on the tunnel: iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o tun+ -j MASQUERADE. And finally, I change the FORWARD chain policy in the filter table to ACCEPT iptables -t filter -P FORWARD ACCEPT.

        Note on the last command: In my case I did iptables-legacy because all the rules were defined there already (iptables gives you a warning if that’s the case), but your container’s version may vary. I saw different behavior on the testing container I spun up on the VPS compared to the one I have running on my homelab.

        Good luck, and let me know if you run into any issues!

        EDIT: The rules look like this afterwards:

        Output of iptables-legacy -vL -t filter:

        Chain INPUT (policy DROP 0 packets, 0 bytes)
         pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination
        10710  788K ACCEPT     all  --  lo     any     anywhere             anywhere
        16698   14M ACCEPT     all  --  any    any     anywhere             anywhere             ctstate RELATED,ESTABLISHED
            1    40 ACCEPT     all  --  eth0   any     anywhere             172.22.0.0/24
        
        # note the ACCEPT policy here
        Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT 3593 packets, 1681K bytes)
         pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination
        
        Chain OUTPUT (policy DROP 0 packets, 0 bytes)
         pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination
        10710  788K ACCEPT     all  --  any    lo      anywhere             anywhere
        13394 1518K ACCEPT     all  --  any    any     anywhere             anywhere             ctstate RELATED,ESTABLISHED
            0     0 ACCEPT     all  --  any    eth0    dac4b9c06987         172.22.0.0/24
            1   176 ACCEPT     udp  --  any    eth0    anywhere             connected-by.global-layer.com  udp dpt:1637
          916 55072 ACCEPT     all  --  any    tun0    anywhere             anywhere
        

        And the output of iptables -vL -t nat:

        Chain PREROUTING (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes)
         pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination
        
        Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes)
         pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination
        
        Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes)
         pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination
            0     0 DOCKER_OUTPUT  all  --  any    any     anywhere             127.0.0.11
        
        # note the MASQUERADE rule here
        Chain POSTROUTING (policy ACCEPT 0 packets, 0 bytes)
         pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination
            0     0 DOCKER_POSTROUTING  all  --  any    any     anywhere             127.0.0.11
          312 18936 MASQUERADE  all  --  any    tun+    anywhere             anywhere
        
        Chain DOCKER_OUTPUT (1 references)
         pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination
            0     0 DNAT       tcp  --  any    any     anywhere             127.0.0.11           tcp dpt:domain to:127.0.0.11:39905
            0     0 DNAT       udp  --  any    any     anywhere             127.0.0.11           udp dpt:domain to:127.0.0.11:56734
        
        Chain DOCKER_POSTROUTING (1 references)
         pkts bytes target     prot opt in     out     source               destination
            0     0 SNAT       tcp  --  any    any     127.0.0.11           anywhere             tcp spt:39905 to::53
            0     0 SNAT       udp  --  any    any     127.0.0.11           anywhere             udp spt:56734 to::53
        
        
        • scapeg0at@midwest.socialOP
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          5 months ago

          I tried out your solution and it worked! I thought it was an iptables / firewall issue on the gluetun end but I didn’t know which table the packets were going through.

          There’s also a way to set persistent iptable rules via gluetun, the docs are here

          Thank you for your help! I’ll clean up my configs, and post my working configs and setup process!