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
+43 -9
View File
@@ -36,6 +36,7 @@ RUN for i in 1 2 3 4 5; do \
socat \
iproute2 \
wireguard-tools \
nftables \
&& rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*
# `libnss3-tools` above provides `certutil`. Chrome/Chromium read neither
@@ -44,22 +45,55 @@ RUN for i in 1 2 3 4 5; do \
# corporate CA, no matter what the system trust store says. entrypoint.sh
# degrades to a warning if it is ever missing.
# `iproute2` and `wireguard-tools` above are what the VPN support toggle
# (`vpn_support_enabled`) grants capability *for*. That toggle hands a project
# CAP_NET_ADMIN and /dev/net/tun; without `ip` there is then no way to add a
# route, and without `wg` no way to build the tunnel those two exist to serve —
# a capability with nothing able to use it.
# `iproute2`, `wireguard-tools` and `nftables` above are what the VPN support
# toggle (`vpn_support_enabled`) grants capability *for*. That toggle hands a
# project CAP_NET_ADMIN and /dev/net/tun; without `ip` there is then no way to
# add a route, and without `wg` no way to build the tunnel those two exist to
# serve — a capability with nothing able to use it.
#
# They are baked rather than left to a runtime `apt-get install` for the same
# reason as the Playwright libraries below: the writable layer is re-paid after
# every Reset and lost on base-image migration. A hand-installed `wg` therefore
# works right up until an upgrade, then disappears and takes the tunnel with it
# — silently, since a VPN that fails to come up looks exactly like one that was
# never started. Together they are ~4.3 MB including dependencies.
# never started.
#
# `iptables` is deliberately NOT here. The only thing that wants it is a desktop
# VPN client's killswitch, and those clients need a GUI that a container has no
# way to give them; leaving it out keeps the reach of CAP_NET_ADMIN smaller.
# Measured against the *current base image*, not a bare ubuntu:24.04 — the base
# already ships libelf1t64, so measuring on bare ubuntu over-counts by ~209 kB:
# +9 packages, 5,614 kB on amd64 (4,153 kB of that is iproute2+wireguard-tools,
# 1,461 kB is nftables). The same set on arm64 is 7,422 kB, measured against
# ubuntu:24.04 since the arm64 base is not cached here.
#
# ## Why `nftables` specifically
#
# `wireguard-tools` declares `Recommends: nftables | iptables`, which the
# `--no-install-recommends` above strips. That is not cosmetic: `wg-quick`'s
# `add_default()` runs whenever a config has `AllowedIPs = 0.0.0.0/0` — i.e.
# every stock full-tunnel config every provider hands out — and it shells out to
# a firewall backend with no `type -p` guard. Measured without one:
#
# [#] iptables-restore -n
# /usr/bin/wg-quick: line 32: iptables-restore: command not found
# wg-quick EXIT=127 (interface rolled back, split tunnels unaffected)
#
# `nftables` rather than `iptables` because `wg-quick` prefers it (`if type -p
# nft`, so with both installed iptables is dead weight), it is the first
# alternative in the package's own Recommends, and it is roughly half the size.
#
# This does NOT make `wg-quick`'s full-tunnel mode work everywhere. `Table=auto`
# routes by fwmark and needs connection-mark tracking from the *host* kernel:
#
# Warning: Extension CONNMARK revision 0 not supported, missing kernel module?
#
# WSL2's kernel has no `xt_CONNMARK` and containers have no /lib/modules to load
# one from, so on Docker Desktop for Windows `wg-quick up` on a full tunnel fails
# regardless of what is installed here. Native Linux and Docker Desktop for Mac
# have it. Shipping the backend is what makes the difference on those two;
# nothing shipped here can make the difference on WSL2, where the way out is to
# add the routes with `ip route` instead of going through `wg-quick` at all.
#
# `iptables` is deliberately still NOT here: with `nftables` present `wg-quick`
# never reaches for it, so it would add size and firewall surface for nothing.
# Remove default ubuntu user to free UID 1000 for host-user remapping
RUN if id ubuntu >/dev/null 2>&1; then userdel -r ubuntu 2>/dev/null || userdel ubuntu; fi \