qubes-miragevpn, a MirageVPN client for QubesOS
+We are pleased to announce the arrival of a new unikernel: +qubes-miragevpn. The latter is the result of work begun +several months ago on miragevpn.
+Indeed, with the ambition of completing our unikernel suite and the success of +qubes-mirage-firewall - as well as the general aims of +QubesOS - we thought it would be a good idea to offer this community a unikernel +capable of acting as an OpenVPN client, from which other virtual machines (app +qubes) can connect so that all their connections pass through the OpenVPN +tunnel.
+QubesOS & MirageOS
+Unikernels and QubesOS have always been a tempting idea for users in the sense +that a network application (such as a firewall or VPN client) could be smaller +than a Linux kernel: no keyboard, mouse, wifi management, etc. Just network +management via virtual interfaces should suffice.
+In this case, the unikernel corresponds to this ideal where, starting from a +base (Solo5) that only allows the strictly necessary (reading and +writing on a virtual interface or block device) and building on top of it all +the application logic strictly necessary to the objective we wish to achieve +reduces, in effect, drastically:
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- the unikernel's attack surface +
- its weight +
- its memory usage +
We won't go into all the work that's been done to maintain and improve +qubes-mirage-firewall over the last 10 +years1, but it's clear that this particular unikernel has +found its audience, who aren't necessarily OCaml and MirageOS aficionados.
+In other words, qubes-mirage-firewall may well be a +fine example of what can actually be done with MirageOS, and of real utility.
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QubesOS & MirageVPN
+So, after a lengthy development phase for MirageVPN, we set about developing a +unikernel for QubesOS to offer an OpenVPN client as an operating system. We'd +like to give special thanks to Pierre Alain, who helped us to better +understand QubesOS and its possibilities.
+The unikernel is available here: https://github.com/robur-coop/qubes-miragevpn +A tutorial has just been created to help QubesOS users install and configure +such an unikernel: https://robur-coop.github.io/miragevpn-handbook/
+In the same way as qubes-mirage-firewall, we hope to +offer a solution that works and expand the circle of MirageOS and unikernel +users!
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