I’m a long-time Transmission user but I just learned that VPN killswitches are a thing (how did it take me so long!?). I would like to try another client which has this feature in case I forget to launch my VPN client before opening Transmission. Does anybody have any recommendations? Deluge? QBittorrent? Or any others?

UPDATE: Thanks for the suggestions everyone! I decided to give qbittorrent a try and have been enjoying it so far.

I followed these steps to bind it to my VPN from on Linux:

  1. Pause torrents
  2. Connect VPN
  3. Open qBittorrent. Go to Preferences, and then Advanced tab
  4. Change network interface to tun0. If unsure, disconnect VPN and restart qBittorrent then repeat step 1 to see which interface appears.
  5. Restart qBittorrent
  6. Test it out on the official kubuntu torrent or your favourite distro from LinuxTracker.org. Turn your VPN on and off while verifying whether it pauses and resumes downloading.
  • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.worldEnglish
    71·
    1 year ago

    As others have said, just use qBit. It’s feature-rich and supports network interface binding. Simply bind it to your VPN’s interface, and it’ll only use your VPN. If your VPN connection drops/isn’t turned on, qBit simply won’t be able to connect.

      • PM_Your_Nudes_Please@lemmy.worldEnglish
        19·
        1 year ago

        I disagree that it’s simpler, because most VPNs will use dynamic IPs. So any time your internet flickers or your power goes out, you’ll need to reconfigure Transmission with the new IP. Sure your method works for a kill switch. But it requires manual intervention every time it gets killed. With qBit’s interface binding, it doesn’t care what the VPN’s IP is. All it cares about is that it’s using the specific interface. So if the VPN is disconnected (and the VPN’s interface has no connection) then qBit simply thinks there’s no connection to the internet.

        • TCB13@lemmy.worldEnglish
          44·
          1 year ago

          you’ll need to reconfigure Transmission with the new IP. Sure your method works for a kill switch. But it requires manual intervention every time it gets killed.

          It doesn’t. You can specify your VPN provider range instead of a single IP and you won’t need manual intervention.

          If you go the systemd route you can do it even better with RestrictNetworkInterfaces:

          RestrictNetworkInterfaces= Takes a list of space-separated network interface names. This option restricts the network interfaces that processes of this unit can use.

          So I guess this is a better option than doing IP or IP range restrictions - zero manual intervention like you do in qBit. I’m so used to work with IPs instead of interfaces (because of the issues that can cause) that I even forgot about that option.

      • baduhaiEnglish
        101·
        1 year ago

        That doesn’t look like a simpler option to me…

        • TCB13@lemmy.worldEnglish
          23·
          1 year ago

          It’s not just about being simple, it’s about 1) still using transmission - because some people like decent and simple torrent clients and 2) a systemd enforced network restriction is way safer than whatever bind to interface / IP setting a program might come up with.

  • umbrella@lemmy.mlEnglish
    38·
    1 year ago

    qbittorrent can do this, and its what I use.

    not sure if its the best nowadays but it works really well for me.

  • CapgrasDelusion@kbin.social
    30·
    1 year ago

    Docker with a gluetun container. This container’s only role is to connect to my VPN provider. Any traffic I want through the VPN is set to use that container as its network. If the VPN goes down, gluetun loses connection, any container attached to gluetun can no longer access the internet.

    I use a qbittorent docker container for my torrent client but you can attach whatever client you’re comfortable with, as well as any other container you prefer be on a VPN.

    While qbittorent has a built in kill switch, this works for everything. No VPN means no connection, period.

    • Maximilious@kbin.social
      6·
      1 year ago

      That’s exactly what I have set up too. I also have gluetun tied to my Prowlarr and NZBget containers. I know Prowlarr tied to VPN may be overkill but it doesn’t hurt anything so why not?

      • CapgrasDelusion@kbin.social
        5·
        1 year ago

        Haha, same. Stuck Prowlarr on there because why not? That’s the beauty of this setup. It takes no effort after gluetun is set, so no reason not to just attach anything even remotely questionable.

      • XTornado@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        As long as the tracker doesn’t have anything against VPNs doesn’t hurt. Nowadays not sure 🤔 but some didn’t allow VPN access on the tracker webpage and at the end except in some cases that is what Prowlarr does.

        • BastingChemina@slrpnk.netEnglish
          1·
          1 year ago

          I have the same setting because some tracker only let you connect with one IP address. So I have Prowlarr and Transmission both connected via gluetun.

  • TCB13@lemmy.worldEnglish
    18·
    1 year ago

    You don’t need to switch to another client. Apparently Transmission can be set to bind to your VPN IP by editing settings.json:

    bind-address-ipv4: String (default = “0.0.0.0”) Where to listen for peer connections. When no valid IPv4 address is provided, Transmission will bind to “0.0.0.0”.

    bind-address-ipv6: String (default = “::”) Where to listen for peer connections. When no valid IPv6 address is provided, Transmission will try to bind to your default global IPv6 address. If that didn’t work, then Transmission will bind to “::”.

    If you set those with your VPN IP and the VPN is down then Transmission won’t be able to communicate with any peers.

    Another option, is to use systemd to restrict Transmission’s networking to your VPN IP. You can make an override of the default transmission daemon unit by using the following command:

    systemctl edit transmission-daemon.service

    Then type what you need to override:

    [Service]
IPAddressDeny=any
IPAddressAllow=10.0.0.1 # --> your VPN IP here

    Another systemd option, might be to restrict it to a single network interface:

    [Service]
RestrictNetworkInterfaces=wg0 # --> your VPN interface

    Save the file and run systemctl daemon-reload followed by systemctl restart transmission-daemon.service and it should be applied.

    This will be safer than just doing bind-address-ipv4 and bind-address-ipv6.

  • GreyShuck@feddit.ukEnglish
    8·
    1 year ago

    Been using QBittorrent for longer than I can remember now. It certainly does everything I have ever wanted from it.

  • finestnothing@lemmy.worldEnglish
    7·
    1 year ago

    Like the other comments, I use qbittorrent. I recommend running your VPN with gluetun and routing the traffic from your qbittorrent container through it. If the gluetun container is down, no traffic at all. If it’s up, everything goes through the vpn

  • Hubi@feddit.deEnglish
    5·
    1 year ago

    Adding to the qbittorrent recommendations: qb has Socks5 support and and supports binding traffic to a specific interface. It doesn’t get much better than this.

  • _thebrain_@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    3·
    1 year ago

    Most can bind it an IP even if they don’t bind to an interface. I use rtorrent and airvpn/wireguard. Wireguard uses a static IP address for the client and rtorrent can bind to that IP. If the VPN goes down (which is very rare in my experience) rtorrent stays running but it won’t work on any other IP address.

  • 520@kbin.social
    1·
    1 year ago

    So, my setup might be of interest to you.

    I have an OpenWRT router with an OpenVPN client on it. I use the router’s firewall rules to secure the access as needed. If I’m using the VPN, then the VPN is the only way traffic can get out, as I close the direct route via firewall.

    This setup persists even after a router reboot.

    To do this easily, I made a Python script that can load the OpenVPN files on the router, switch on/off the OpenVPN connection and modify the firewall accordingly.

    This affects the entire network, and means I am not reliant on the torrent software or desktop VPN client playing ball.

    Happy to share my script if it will be handy to you.

  • SokathHisEyesOpen@lemmy.mlEnglish
    11·
    1 year ago

    If you’re using Nord VPN then you can enable a kill switch directly in the VPN through a console command which is documented on the Nord docs. It works, I tested it.

    • archomrade [he/him]@midwest.socialEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      I would not rely on Nord’s VPN killswitch. It can be slow and unreliable and still briefly expose your IP to the swarm. I got an ISP letter thinking I was protected through nord’s killswitch, but turns out it was not completely covering me.

      I would bind the client to the wireguard network interface directly through the client. In Qbittorrent you can do it pretty easily as @CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml mentioned.

    • Random Dent@lemmy.mlEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Mullvad has one right in the GUI too, it’s called “Lockdown Mode” IIRC.

      Also qBittorrent has a thing in preferences where you can bind it to a specific network interface, so you can just set it to whatever your VPN uses (for Mullvad Wireguard it’s ‘wg-mullvad’) and then if the VPN goes down it just won’t do anything.