Talk:Private Internet Access
Suggestions For Clarity
Overview Hi everyone. Would like to discuss this section for PIA VPN. 'Setting PIA DNS'. The way this section is written could be confusing in it's current form. Having experienced an issue with DNS not resolving on multiple machines now with PIA (utilizing the GUI official app) and the manual OpenVPN processes this section is very important as it does ultimately resolve the problem but in it's current for is leaving out some level of clarification to the user. I'm hoping we can discuss ways to improve the instructions to be more clear. Thank you for your time and expertise.
Current Dispute There is a valid dispute open on an update: Reason: Using resolvconf after editing /etc/resolv.conf makes no sense. If openresolv is used then the nameservers should be set in /etc/resolvconf.conf, and /etc/resolv.conf should not be manually edited.
Potential concerns:
- If /etc/resolvconf.conf should not be used why is it not mentioned in this article instead of the current iteration discussing the editing of /etc/resolv.conf?
- The symbolic link suggestion also doesn't seem to be well explained as to why you would create it and then remove it in the next step.
- When editing /etc/resolv.conf without running a sudo resolvconf -u the changes does not take effect. Another option would be to instruct a reboot, however, that does not always trigger the changes to take effect in my experience. The other option is to suggest using resolvconf with the -a or -d option by triggering an ifdown and ifup to set the changes.
—This unsigned comment is by Dasgeek (talk) 22:20, 13 April 2019 (UTC). Please sign your posts with ~~~~!
Recomedation for improving the manual sections suggestion of disabling IPv6
Rather than disabling IPv6 for the entire system, would it not be better for the guide to help the user how to setup v6 blackholing so that IPv6 is blocked while the VPN is running? Ioangogo (talk) 18:13, 21 March 2021 (UTC)
Setting PIA DNS
I was able to correctly configure this after doing more research about DNS and the way it is handled in general. I recommend looking at Domain name resolution, systemd-resolved, and NetworkManager for more information.
When using NetworkManager and systemd-resolved, you will need to install systemd-resolvconf.
Next, check /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/dns.conf and ensure that systemd-resolved is enabled for dns like so:
/etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/dns.conf
[main] dns=systemd-resolved
Now to configure /etc/resolv.conf. In my case, I had messed things up by removing the symlink. We need to restore it so that systemd-resolved will work correctly. In order to do this, we have to first stop NetworkManager and PIA:
# systemctl stop NetworkManager # systemctl stop piavpn.service
Next, restore the symlink:
# rm -f /etc/resolv.conf # ln --symbolic /run/systemd/resolve/stub-resolv.conf /etc/resolv.conf
Finally, start NetworkManager and PIA again:
# systemctl start NetworkManager # systemctl start piavpn.service