I have a friend in Russia who loves watching animal videos and those silly video essays on YouTube and now YouTube is blocked in Russia. I have a spare netbook with Linux Mint and I've been trying to set up an OpenVPN server for her using this guide and I've tried a cracked version of OpenVPN Access Server, but I guess this whole thing is above my pay grade – the client on my phone still won't connect.

What the easiest solution to this situation? Should pull the trigger and install Debian because all those easy setup guides are targeted to Debian? Is there is easier alternative to OpenVPN with an android client?

  • kleeon [he/him, he/him]
    ·
    3 months ago

    I live in Russia so here is what I do personally.

    Buy an ipv4 proxy server on https://proxy6.net/. I recommend getting the shared one for 33 rubles(if available) because I haven't noticed any bandwidth improvements for the dedicated ones. This site takes MIR cards so payment shouldn't be a problem. Make sure to set the proxy to HTTP mode. Also beware that proxies from this site can be a bit slow - though it's usually around 8mbit/s which should be enough for full hd videos.

    Now configure split tunneling.

    For PC, I use "Proxy SwitchyOmega" extension for Chrome. Add your proxy in the "proxy" tab and then set up your switch rules like so:

    Show

    For my phone, I use VProxid app and route all the traffic coming from youtube app through the proxy.

  • trompete [he/him]
    ·
    3 months ago

    Maybe a SOCKS proxy is good enough?

    SSH can act as a SOCKS proxy and that's pretty easy to do. Your friend just needs to be able to login onto your computer with an ssh account and run this ssh command on her computer:

    ssh -D 1234 yourmachine

    And then set proxy settings in the browser or whatever to SOCKS4/5, localhost, port 1234.

  • loathsome dongeater@lemmygrad.ml
    ·
    3 months ago

    You should look into tailscale (and if you want, headscale, which is a foss tailscale server implementation that tailscale clients including the android one work with out of the box). I haven't used tailscale for this explicit purpose so I don't know the exact steps but from the documentation I remember reading that setting up something like this is possible.

    • StLangoustine [any]
      ·
      3 months ago

      Afiak hose commercial VPN services are on borrowed time in Russia.

    • Tomorrow_Farewell [any, they/them]
      ·
      3 months ago

      I don't think you understand the effects of relevant blockages. This doesn't just cut off people from entertainment and pro-western propaganda on Youtube. This stuff also prevents people from accessing stuff like libgen, pirate-jammin, getting extensions for some development environments, getting development-related software from repositories, and likely other stuff that I'm forgetting right now, not to mention the fact that Youtube also has plenty of educational material that is likely not replicated on VK or other Russian platforms.