Install

Requirements

Currently, GNU/Linux is the only supported operating system. We plan to port the software to other operating systems in the future.

The software has been developed and tested on Debian (bullseye), Mobian, and Ubuntu (20.04 and 20.10). It is likely to work on other modern systemd-based distributions.

Vula can also be run without systemd, and/or in a single monolithic process, but how to do so is not yet documented.

We do not yet offer packages for download, but you can build your own deb or wheel from a git checkout.

Install

option 0: quick install

For a simple technology demonstration we offer an insecure quick install (eg: a dangerous curl pipe sudo bash) process:

cd /dev/shm && wget https://codeberg.org/vula/vula/raw/branch/main/misc/quick-install.sh
bash quick-install.sh

option 1: manually build and install Debian Packages

sudo apt install --no-install-recommends wireguard wireguard-tools python3-yaml python3-click python3-nacl python3-schema python3-pip python3-pydbus python3-pyroute2 python3-pytest-runner python3-pytest python3-toml python3-py python3-packaging python3-pluggy python3-hkdf python3-ifaddr python3-cryptography python3-dbus python3-pygments python3-systemd python3-qrcode python3-all python-all fakeroot build-essential dh-python debhelper make gcc python3-all-dev python3-zeroconf
sudo pip3 install stdeb sibc (note: unfortunately this step still requires installing stdeb, sibc, and its dependencies with pip as root - you can alternately build a deb of sibc but this procedure is not yet documented here. the stdeb version from Debian stable and Ubuntu 20.10 is insufficient, however.)
git clone --recurse-submodules https://codeberg.org/vula/vula_libnss
cd vula_libnss
make deb && sudo dpkg -i deb_dist/python3-vula-libnss_*.deb
cd ../
git clone https://codeberg.org/vula/vula
cd vula
make deb && sudo dpkg -i deb_dist/python3-vula_*_all.deb

Installing the deb will automatically configure nsswitch, restart systemd-sysusers, reload dbus, etc, and will tell systemd to enable and start the vula-organize service.

option 2: build a wheel and install with pip

This option is available for advanced technical users - it requires manual setup of [vula_libnss](https://codeberg.org/vula/vula_libnss) after installing vula_libnss. This essentially means ensuring that the libnss shared object file is installed in /lib/libnss_vula.so.2. This may be installed by building a Debian package or by installing vula_libnss with pip and manually copying the libnss_vula.so.2 file from inside the installed location to the correct location on the system.

If you don’t mind installing many things using sudo pip, the software can be installed this way:

git clone --recurse-submodules https://codeberg.org/vula/vula
cd vula
sudo pip install .

After installing with pip, users will need to configure the system:

sudo vula configure nsswitch
sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl restart systemd-sysusers
sudo systemctl reload dbus
sudo systemctl enable --now vula-organize

Running vula

To see the current status:

vula

To start vula (via dbus activation) if it is not started, or print the status if it is:

vula start

To see a list of subcommands:

vula --help

To see a list of peers:

vula peer

To see a list of commands for working with peers:

vula peer --help

To see a list of peers, including disabled peers:

vula peer show --all

To see descriptors and qrcodes for all enabled peers:

vula peer show -Dq

To see the preferences:

vula prefs

To see commands for editing preferences:

vula prefs --help