Keep rotating VPN -country

[IlmariKu]

Hey guys,

I don't want to run my box from the same VPN-address all the time, so implemented a simple rotator script with crontab.

The idea is that, few times a night, it takes a 1/4 chance, whether to start the container all new again, with a randomly assigned country. I don't want to continously have the same-IP and I also want to break the time-connection, so there's an random wait between 0 seconds and 1 hour before new container is started.

Any thoughts, ideas on why it might not be sensible thing to do?

crontab

24 2 * * * /home/ilmari/transmission_rotate.sh >> /dev/null 2>&1
21 1 * * * /home/ilmari/transmission_rotate.sh >> /dev/null 2>&1
36 5 * * * /home/ilmari/transmission_rotate.sh >> /dev/null 2>&1
00 4 * * * /home/ilmari/transmission_rotate.sh >> /dev/null 2>&1

transmission.sh

# Dont execute it every time to create randomness
# Generate a random number between 1 and 4
NUMBER=$(( ( RANDOM % 4 ) + 1 ))

# If the number is 1, continue with the script, otherwise exit
if [ $NUMBER -eq 1 ]; then
    echo "Continuing execution..."
else
    exit 1
fi

echo "Killing previous container"
podman ps | grep haugene/transmission-openvpn | awk '{print $1}' | xargs -I {} podman kill {}

COUNTRIES=("france" "luxembourg" "sweden" "spain" "kazakhstan")

# Get random index from 0 to length of the array
INDEX=$(( RANDOM % ${#COUNTRIES[@]} ))

# Pick a random country from the array
RANDOM_COUNTRY=${COUNTRIES[$INDEX]}

echo "Selected country is: $RANDOM_COUNTRY"

# Sleep for random time, until restarting with another region
SECONDS=$((RANDOM % 3600))
echo "Sleeping for $SECONDS before starting with another country"
sleep $SECONDS

podman run --privileged -d \
    -v /mnt/media/:/data \
    -v /home/youruser/transmission-config/:/config \
    -e OPENVPN_PROVIDER=yourprovider \
    -e OPENVPN_CONFIG=$RANDOM_COUNTRY \
    -e OPENVPN_USERNAME=username \
    -e CREATE_TUN_DEVICE=false \
    -e OPENVPN_PASSWORD=password \
    -e LOCAL_NETWORK=192.168.0.0/16 \
    --log-driver k8s-file \
    --log-opt max-size=10m \
    -p 9091:9091 \
    haugene/transmission-openvpn

[CharlieCoops7]

this is a great idea - can't think of a downside. I usually have a VPN location slow down after ~24 hours and only switching to another VPN location fixes it so I'd like an option ideally for it to choose a random OPVN file from a folder on each reboot as that might be more universal for users.