Re: Accessing a host with variable IP addresses / connection types
On Tue, 16 Apr 2019 11:03:14 -0400
Celejar <celejar@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've been bedeviled by this question for a while, but have been unable
> to figure out a clean, non-hackish solution. It may be an XY problem ...
>
> I have a system (laptop, running Debian) that is sometimes connected
> directly to my LAN, and sometimes connected via VPN (wireguard, to the
> local router, running OpenWrt). The LAN is 192.168.0.0/24, with the
> laptop having a fixed, static address in that range (although I'm
> certainly open to using DHCP, possibly with a fixed address
> reservation). The VPN is 10.0.0.0/24, with the laptop getting a fixed,
> static address in that range (and wireguard apparently doesn't work
> with dhcp).
>
> I currently have an entry in /etc/hosts on the various LAN hosts
> assigning a hostname to the laptop's fixed local address, and the LAN
> hosts can access the laptop via that hostname. [I could alternatively
> use dnsmasq, which is running on the router regardless.] This obviously
> doesn't work when the laptop is connected via VPN. [The laptop can
> access the LAN hosts fine via their hostnames, so I seem to have the
> routing correctly configured on the laptop and the router.]
>
> What I seem to want (but maybe XY?) is some way to adjust the host
> files (or dnsmasq's information) so that the hostname will resolve to
> the LAN address when the laptop is connected to the LAN, and the VPN
> address when it's connected via VPN. If everything was using DHCP, this
> would be straightforward enough, but as I said, the VPN apparently
> needs to be configured statically, and not via DHCP. I could obviously
> use some custom script (using, say, ageas, to modify host files) but
> this seems hackish. What is a standard, 'correct' way to do this, or
> more generally, to enable the LAN hosts to access the laptop
> seamlessly regardless of its IP address and connection type?
>
> Celejar
We had a long thread about this back in April [0], but no good solution
was presented, so I decided to design a framework to address this
problem. It's probably overkill, but it was a good opportunity to
practice my Perl in general, and learn how to write a web application
in particular. So FWIW, I give you 'dynhosts':
https://github.com/tmo1/dynhosts
[0] https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2019/04/msg00725.html
Celejar
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