Hamachi

Hamachi is a proprietary (closed source) commercial VPN software. With Hamachi you can organize two or more computers with an Internet connection into their own virtual network for direct secure communication.

Installation

Version 2 of the Linux Hamachi client exists and is currently in beta. It is available from the labs page on the Hamachi website; however, the vendor's tarball requires LSB and will not install correctly. You should use the logmein-hamachi^AUR package from the AUR instead.

Configuration

Set up tun

To run Hamachi you need /dev/net/tun.

This is created by the tun module. As root, run:

modprobe tun

Or you can manually create /dev/net/tun by running:

mkdir /dev/net
mknod /dev/net/tun c 10 200

Also, make sure to add the "tun" modules to rc.conf so that /dev/net/tun is created next time your computer turns on.

MODULES=(... ... ... ... ... tun ... ... ...)

Set Up Tun For Systemd

Being as section above can only be applied for init.scripts, in order to install the module, as root run:

modprobe tun

Then add tun to the list of modules by using your favorite text editor and running

# vi /etc/modules-load.d/tun.conf 

Hamachi 2 (beta)

Hamachi 2 is configured in /var/lib/logmein-hamachi/h2-engine-override.cfg (create that file if it doesn't exist). Unfortunately, it isn't easy to find a comprehensive list of possible configuration options, so here are a few that you can use.

Using the hamachi command line tool as a regular user

In order to use the hamachi command line tool as a regular user, add the following line to the configuration file:

Ipc.User YourUserNameHere

Automatically setting a custom nickname

Normally, Hamachi uses your system's hostname as the nickname that other Hamachi users will see. If you want to automatically set a custom nickname every time Hamachi starts, add the following line to the configuration file:

Setup.AutoNick YourNicknameHere

You can also manually set a nickname using the hamachi command line tool:

# hamachi set-nick YourNicknameHere

However, this needs to be done every time Hamachi is (re-)started, so if you always want to use the same nickname, setting it automatically (as explained above) is probably easier.

Running Hamachi

Start up the (matt) daemon

$hamachi start

Now you have a whole bunch of commands at your disposal. These are in no particular order and are fairly self explanatory.

$hamachi set-nick bob
$hamachi login
$hamachi create my-net secretpassword
$hamachi go-online my-net
$hamachi list
$hamachi go-offline my-net

To get a list of all the commands, run:

$hamachi ?

Note: Make sure you change the status of the channel(s) you are in to "online" if you want to perform any network actions on computers in there.

Systemd

The logmein-hamachi^AUR AUR package also includes a nice little Systemd daemon.

If you feel like it, you can set Hamachi to start at every boot with Systemd:

systemctl enable logmein-hamachi

To start the Hamachi Daemon immediately, use this command:

systemctl start logmein-hamachi

Note: If for some reason, hamachi doesn't have a Systemd daemon, you can use one from here.

init.scripts (depreciated)

Note: If you run a newer Arch system, use the Systemd method above. This section below can only be applied for init.scripts.

You can run Hamachi as a daemon this way:

Copy your configuration to /root directory:

cp -R ~/.hamachi /root/

Create a script in /etc/rc.d/ called hamachi using your preferred editor:

. /etc/rc.conf
. /etc/rc.d/functions

DAEMON=/usr/bin/hamachi
NAME=hamachi
DESC="Hamachi VPN client"
PID_FILE=/var/run/daemons/hamachi

case "$1" in
    start)
        #Check for running tuntap, start when not running
        ck_daemon tuntap && /etc/rc.d/tuntap start
        stat_busy "Starting $DESC"
        $DAEMON -c /root/.hamachi $1 > /dev/null
        if [ $? -gt 0 ]; then
            stat_fail
        else
            add_daemon $NAME
            stat_done
        fi
        ;;
    stop)
        stat_busy "Stopping $DESC"
        [ -f $PID_FILE ] && $DAEMON -c /root/.hamachi $1 > /dev/null
        if [ $? -gt 0 ]; then
            stat_fail
        else
            rm_daemon $NAME
            stat_done
        fi
        ;;
    restart)
        $0 stop
        $0 start
        ;;
    *)
        echo "usage: $0 {start|stop|restart}"
	;;
esac
exit 0

Remember to add hamachi to your daemons array in /etc/rc.conf, it should be put after tuntap.

And do not forget to:

chmod +x /etc/rc.d/hamachi

GUI

Various GUI frontends for Hamachi are available in the AUR.

For Hamachi 1:

• haguichi (Gtk2, mono)
• ghamachi (Gtk2)
• hamachi-gui (Gtk2)

For Hamachi 2 (beta):

• quamachi (Qt4)
• haguichi (Gtk2, mono)

Troubleshooting

Hamachi times out soon after launch

If hamachi stops working after a short period of time it can be that the client is timing out. Create ~/.hamachi/config and add the following to it:

KeepAlive 10

If you have problems connecting to some hosts

Check if they are using Hamachi 2. If that is the case, then it is a known issue with the Hamachi 2 client connecting to the Hamachi Linux client.

/etc/init.d/logmein-hamachi is not found

Replace that path with /etc/rc.d/logmein-hamachi.

Error when trying to run hamachi-init

If there is an error while trying to load libstdc++.so.5, you want to install it. This library can be found in the extra repository, so you can install it by running pacman -S libstdc++5.

If you get an error while trying to load libcrypto.so.0.9.7, a temporary solution is to create a link from /usr/lib/libcrypto.so.0.9.7 to /usr/lib/libcrypto.so by running ln -s /usr/lib/libcrypto.so /usr/lib/libcrypto.so.0.9.7.

See also

• Project home page