Hi folks, I’m just getting into this hobby thanks to the posts in this community. So far, I’ve installed Ubuntu server 22.04 on an old laptop and got paperless working, and I’m pretty pumped. Now I would like to access it outside of my home network on my phone.

I have a Netgear R7000 with Advanced Tomato installed. Here’s my plan, but I don’t know if it would work… So I’m hoping for a peer review of sorts.

  • Get openVPN working on the router as a server.
  • make a certificate for my phone and use it as a client.
  • use my fedora laptop as the CA (?).

I think I need to use easy-RDA to make the keys and certificates…

Does that sound about right? It’s this a good approach or is there something better/easier/more effective?

If there’s a great tutorial around for accessing the home network externally, I’d super appreciate it. Would obviously prefer to do it myself and not pay for a service… I’ve been enjoying the learning experience!

@Drudge
That’s a pretty solid plan, although I’d use WireGuard instead of OpenVPN. Otherwise, step 1 may take a lot of time, whereas WG makes all that dumb simple. There are even tools (eg dsnet) that generate client configs that work with the WG Android client.

One fantastic thing about WG is not having to dick with CAs or CA authorities.

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