TINC(5)

NAME
tinc.conf - tinc daemon configuration

DESCRIPTION
The files in the /etc/tinc directory contain runtime and security information for the tincd(8) daemon.

NETWORKS
It is perfectly ok for you to run more than one tinc daemon. However, in its default form, you will soon notice that you can't use two different configuration files without the -c option. We have thought of another way of dealing with this: network names. This means that you call tincd with the -n argument, which will assign a name to this daemon. The effect of this is that the daemon will set its configuration ``root'' to /etc/tinc/netname/, where netname is your argument to the -n option. You'll notice that it appears in syslog as ``tincd.netname''. However, it is not strictly necessary that you call tinc with the -n option. In this case, the network name would just be empty, and it will be used as such. tinc now looks for files in /etc/tinc/, instead of /etc/tinc/netname/; the configuration file should be /etc/tinc/tinc.conf, and the passphrases are now expected to be in /etc/tinc/passphrases/. But it is highly recommended that you use this feature of tinc, because it will be so much clearer whom your daemon talks to. Hence, we will assume that you use it.

NAMES
Each tinc daemon should have a name that is unique in the network which it will be part of. The name will be used by other tinc daemons for identification. The name has to be declared in the /etc/tinc/netname/tinc.conf file. To make things easy, choose something that will give unique and easy to rememebr names to your tinc daemon(s). You could try things like hostnames, owner surnames or location names.

PUBLIC/PRIVATE KEYS
You should use tincd --generate-keys to generate public/private keypairs. It will generate two keys. The private key should be stored in a separate file /etc/tinc/netname/rsa_key.priv -- where netname stands for the network (See under NETWORKS) above. The public key should be stored in the host configuration file /etc/tinc/netname/hosts/name -- where name stands for the name of the local tinc daemon (See NAMES).

SERVER CONFIGURATION
The server configuration of the daemon is done in the file /etc/tinc/netname/tinc.conf. This file consists of comments (lines started with a #) or assignments in the form of

    Variable = Value.

The variable names are case insensitive, and any spaces, tabs, newlines and carriage returns are ignored. Note: it is not required that you put in the = sign, but doing so improves readability. If you leave it out, remember to replace it with at least one space character.

Here are all valid variables, listed in alphabetical order. The default value is given between parentheses.

ConnectTo = <name>
    Specifies which host to connect to on startup. Multiple ConnectTo variables may be specified, if connecting to the first one fails then tinc will try the next one, and so on. The names should be known to this tinc daemon (i.e., there should be a host configuration file for the name on the ConnectTo line). If you don't specify a host with ConnectTo, tinc won't try to connect to other daemons at all, and will instead just listen for incoming connections.

Hostnames = <yes|no> (no)
    This option selects whether IP addresses (both real and on the VPN) should be resolved. Since DNS lookups are blocking, it might affect tinc's efficiency, even stopping the daemon for a few seconds everytime it does a lookup if your DNS server is not responding. This does not affect resolving hostnames to IP addresses from the host configuration files.

Interface = <device>
    If you have more than one network interface in your computer, tinc will by default listen on all of them for incoming connections. It is possible to bind tinc to a single interface like eth0 or ppp0 with this variable.

InterfaceIP = <local address>
    If your computer has more than one IP address on a single interface (for example if you are running virtual hosts), tinc will by default listen on all of them for incoming connections. It is possible to bind tinc to a single IP address with this variable. It is still possible to listen on several interfaces at the same time though, if they share the same IP address.

KeyExpire = <seconds> (3600)
    This option controls the time the encryption keys used to encrypt the data are valid. It is common practice to change keys at regular intervals to make it even harder for crackers, even though it is thought to be nearly impossible to crack a single key.

Name = <name> [required]
    This is the name which identifies this tinc daemon. It must be unique for the virtual private network this daemon will connect to.

PingTimeout = <seconds> (60)
    The number of seconds of inactivity that tinc will wait before sending a probe to the other end. If that other end doesn't answer within that same amount of seconds, the connection is terminated, and the others will be notified of this.

PrivateKey = <key> [obsolete]
    The private RSA key of this tinc daemon. It will allow this tinc daemon to authenticate itself to other daemons.

PrivateKeyFile = <filename> [recommended]
    The file in which the private RSA key of this tinc daemon resides. Note that there must be exactly one of PrivateKey or PrivateKeyFile specified in the configuration file.

TapDevice = <device> (/dev/tap0 or /dev/net/tun)
    The ethertap or tun/tap device to use. tinc will automatically detect what kind of tapdevice it is. Note that you can only use one device per daemon. The info pages of the tinc package contain more information about configuring an ethertap device for Linux.

HOST CONFIGURATION FILES
The host configuration files contain all information needed to establish a connection to those hosts. A host configuration file is also required for the local tinc daemon, it will use it to read in it's listen port, public key and subnets. The idea is that these files are ``portable''. You can safely mail your own host configuration file to someone else. That other person can then copy it to his own hosts directory, and now his tinc daemon will be able to connect to your tinc daemon. Since host configuration files only contain public keys, no secrets are revealed by sending out this information.

Address = <IP address> [recommended]
    The real address or hostname of this tinc daemon.

IndirectData = <yes|no> (no) [experimental]
    This option specifies whether other tinc daemons besides the one you specified with ConnectTo can make a direct connection to you. This is especially useful if you are behind a firewall and it is impossible to make a connection from the outside to your tinc daemon. Otherwise, it is best to leave this option out or set it to no.

Port = <port number> (655)
    The port on which this tinc daemon is listening for incoming connections.

PublicKey = <key> [obsolete]
    The public RSA key of this tinc daemon. It will be used to cryptographically verify it's identity and to set up a secure connection.

PublicKeyFile = <filename> [obsolete]
    The file in which the public RSA key of this tinc daemon resides. From version 1.0pre4 on tinc will store the public key directly into the host configuration file in PEM format, the above two options then are not necessary. Either the PEM format is used, or exactly one of the above two options must be specified in each host configuration file, if you want to be able to establish a connection with that host.

Subnet = <address/masklength>
    The subnet which this tinc daemon will serve. tinc tries to look up which other daemon it should send a packet to by searching the appropiate subnet. If the packet matches a subnet, it will be sent to the daemon who has this subnet in his host configuration file. Multiple subnet lines can be specified. At the moment, this directive is only used in the host configuration file of the local tinc daemon itself. In upcoming versions of tinc, it will be possible to restrict other hosts in which subnets they server. The subnets must be in a form like 192.168.1.0/24, where 192.168.1.0 is the network address and 24 is the number of bits set in the netmask. Note that subnets like 192.168.1.1/24 are invalid! Read a networking howto/FAQ/guide if you don't understand this.

TCPonly = <yes|no> (no) [experimental]
    If this variable is set to yes, then the packets are tunnelled over a TCP connection instead of a UDP connection. This is especially useful for those who want to run a tinc daemon from behind a masquerading firewall, or if UDP packet routing is disabled somehow. This is experimental code, try this at your own risk. It may not work at all. Setting this options also implicitly sets IndirectData.

FILES

/etc/tinc/
    The top directory for configuration files.

/etc/tinc/netname/tinc.conf
    The default name of the server configuration file for net netname.

/etc/tinc/netname/hosts/
    Host configuration files are kept in this directory.

/etc/tinc/netname/tinc-up
    If an executable file with this name exists, it will be executed right after the tinc daemon has connected to the tap device. It can be used to ifconfig the network interface. If the tapdevice is a tun/tap device, the evironment variable $IFNAME will be set to the name of the network interface.

/etc/tinc/netname/tinc-down
    If an executable file with this name exists, it will be executed right before the tinc daemon is going to close it's connection to the tap device.

SEE ALSO
tincd(8)

http://tinc.nl.linux.org/

http://www.linuxdoc.org/LDP/nag2/

The full documentation for tinc is maintained as a Texinfo manual. If the info and tinc programs are properly installed at your site, the command

    info tinc

should give you access to the complete manual.

tinc comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; see the file COPYING for details.