Ship a firewall backend, and correct three claims review disproved
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Review of #28 found the iptables exclusion was justified by a false premise,
and I confirmed it: `wireguard-tools` declares `Recommends: nftables | iptables`,
`--no-install-recommends` strips it, and `wg-quick`'s add_default() shells out
to a firewall backend with no `type -p` guard. Measured on the image as this PR
shipped it:

    [#] iptables-restore -n
    /usr/bin/wg-quick: line 32: iptables-restore: command not found
    wg-quick EXIT=127

That fires for `AllowedIPs = 0.0.0.0/0` — every stock full-tunnel config from
every provider — not for a desktop client's killswitch as the comment claimed.
Split tunnels are unaffected.

Ship `nftables` rather than `iptables`: wg-quick prefers it (`type -p nft`, so
with both installed iptables is dead weight), it is first in the package's own
Recommends, and it is half the size.

The review's proposed fix stopped there; it does not hold. Adding nftables does
not make wg-quick work on this host, and neither does iptables:

    Warning: Extension CONNMARK revision 0 not supported, missing kernel module?

`Table=auto` routes by fwmark and needs xt_CONNMARK from the *host* kernel.
WSL2 has none and containers have no /lib/modules to load one from. So this
fixes native Linux and Docker Desktop for Mac — which other WHP users are on —
and cannot fix Docker Desktop for Windows, where the answer is to add routes
with `ip route` directly. Documented rather than left to be rediscovered.

Also from review:

- "`ip` and `wg` are always present" was false. A project keeps the base image
  it was first built from, so this reaches new projects only. Reworded to match
  the wording already used for the Playwright libraries, and `/usr/bin/wg` added
  to FEATURE_PROBES so an existing project is *told* it is missing VPN tooling
  and prompted to migrate, rather than finding out via `wg: command not found`.
- "no client is installed" contradicted shipping `wg` four lines earlier. The
  true claim is that no tunnel is configured or started.
- The size figure measured against bare ubuntu:24.04, which over-counts by the
  ~209 kB of libelf1t64 the real base already has, and covered one arch. Now
  measured against the current base on amd64 and stated for arm64 too, per the
  standard CLAUDE.md sets for the Playwright layer.
- `/run` persistence conflated two mechanisms: same-container files on a
  stop/start, `docker commit` on a recreation. Both stated, plus the corollary
  that key material written to /run ends up inside a snapshot image — observed,
  a `wg.priv` was already sitting in one.
- The DNS bullet presented a Docker Desktop address as the general case. Now
  leads with the mechanism, notes 127.0.0.11 on a user-defined network is
  unaffected, and adds the two things the advice omitted: a resolver the tunnel
  can reach (or it leaks every query), and pinning the endpoint via the old
  gateway (or the tunnel routes through itself).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
2026-08-17 13:55:44 -07:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 5
parent 00937745f7
commit ab2c75d0b2
4 changed files with 94 additions and 31 deletions
+18 -4
View File
@@ -203,7 +203,8 @@ docker exec stdout → tokio task → emit("terminal-output-{sessionId}") → li
### Container (`container/`)
- **`Dockerfile`** — Ubuntu 24.04 base with Claude Code, Node.js 22, Python 3.12, Rust, Docker CLI, git, gh, AWS CLI v2, ripgrep, pnpm, uv, ruff pre-installed, plus the shared
libraries a browser links against (see below)
libraries a browser links against (see below) and the VPN tooling the `vpn_support_enabled`
toggle grants capability for (`iproute2`, `wireguard-tools`, `nftables`)
- **Browser runtime libraries are baked in; browser *binaries* are not.** A layer runs
`npx --yes playwright@latest install-deps chromium` as root, so Playwright names its own
dependencies and the list cannot rot against Ubuntu 24.04's `t64` renames or a new Chromium
@@ -316,9 +317,22 @@ container is created once by a very long function where a dropped capability is
base-image migration — leaving a project holding the capability with nothing able to exercise it,
and no error that points at why. `iptables` is deliberately absent; see the Dockerfile comment.
- **Anything built on this fails open.** The network namespace is rebuilt on every start and no
service manager runs inside, so a tunnel never survives stop/start or recreation while `/run`
state persists through the snapshot and makes it look as though it did. Traffic silently reverts
to the real address. Any future autostart or killswitch work starts here.
service manager runs inside, so a tunnel never survives stop/start or recreation while leftover
`/run` state makes it look as though it did. Note the two different mechanisms: `/run` is in the
writable layer, so on a stop/start it is simply the same container's files, and on a recreation
`docker commit` has carried it into the snapshot. Traffic silently reverts to the real address.
Any future autostart or killswitch work starts here.
- **`/run` riding the snapshot means a VPN client's key material can end up in an image.** Verified:
a fresh container off the whp snapshot already contained the `wg.priv` a previous tunnel left in
`/run`. Anything writing key material there inherits the problem — the same `docker commit`
hazard as `triple-c.git-token-hash` and the custom-env fingerprint, in a directory that looks
ephemeral and is not. A VPN client that does this should delete its key on teardown.
- **`wg-quick` full tunnels need `xt_CONNMARK` from the host kernel**, which WSL2 does not have and
a container cannot load; `Recommends: nftables | iptables` is also stripped by
`--no-install-recommends`, so `nftables` is baked explicitly. See the Dockerfile comment — the
short version is that shipping the backend fixes native Linux and Docker Desktop for Mac, nothing
fixes Docker Desktop for Windows, and adding the routes directly with `ip route` sidesteps it on
all three.
### Container Lifecycle