qBittorrent with GlueTUN VPN in Container Manager on a Synology NAS

A small note to remember about updates in this guide I set GlueTUN to use the ‘latest’ version tag, sometimes it has updates which break things, so if you have an issue after an update roll back to the most recent full stable release from this page, so for example as of August 2024 that would be image: qmcgaw/gluetun:v3.39

What are qBittorrent and GlueTUN?

qBittorrent is a torrent downloader and GlueTUN is the Docker container that has pre-configured VPN connections for numerous VPN providers.

Before you start check the GlueTUN Wiki to see if your provider is on the supported list.

Also, if you are yet to choose a provider have a look at the Reddit list of recommended suppliers as could save you a headache when trying to seed. I currently use AirVPN which has nice easy port forwarding unlike some others. This is my affiliate link if you fancy signing up.

Let’s Begin

In this guide I will take you through the steps to get qBittorrent up and running in Docker and a separate GlueTUN VPN container. By having a separate container for the VPN connection we can use it in the future for other applications such as Prowlarr, this is useful if you have torrent indexers blocked in your country.

In order for you to successfully use this guide please complete the three preceding guides

• Docker, Memory Recommendations and Limitations
  
• Step 1: Directory Setup Guide
• Step 2: Setting up a restricted Docker user
• Step 3: Setting up a Docker Bridge Network

Folder Setup

Let’s start by getting some folders set up for the containers to use. Open up File Station create the following.

/docker/projects/vpnproject-compose
/docker/gluetun
/docker/qbittorrent

Setting up the TUN start up script

In order for the VPN connection to work we need to make sure the TUN Interface is available to make the connection to a VPN provider. In order to ensure it is available even after a reboot we will set up a small ‘script’.

Open up Control Panel and then click on Task Scheduler

Next click on Create, Triggered Task then User Defined Script.

Enter the following:

On the Task Settings tab copy and paste the code below in the ‘User-Defined script’ section. It will look like screenshot.

#!/bin/sh -e

insmod /lib/modules/tun.ko

You can now press OK and agree to the warning message. Next run the script which will enable the TUN device.

You can now move on to the next step.

Wireguard Kernel Module – Recommended for Performance & Reduced CPU Resource (not required for OpenVPN)

The default Gluetun Wireguard setup uses a ‘Userspace’ implementation of Wireguard which requires higher CPU resources. For example a 40MiB download via qBittorrent uses up to 176% in CPU (1.7 Cores) on my 1821+.

By installing the appropriate Kernel Module this reduces down to 1 or 2% which frees up the CPU for other tasks.

BlackVoid.club have put together a Kernel Module for Synology which allows Gluetun to use the lower level Kernel to perform Wireguard duties make sure you drop them a thanks as this would not be possible without them!

https://www.blackvoid.club/wireguard-spk-for-your-synology-nas/

While on first glances it looks like a long installation process the page details a number of methods. I recommend having a read taking note of warnings and also if you want to build your own module it tells you how.

The TLDR is below.

1. Find your model of NAS under the correct DSM version section (If you are following this guide it will be 7.2) and download the pre compiled .spk file
2. Head into Package Center and click ‘Manual Install’ on the top right and install the .spk file and untick the box to run after install
3. Reboot
4. SSH Into your NAS (Just like in the User Setup guide) and elevate yourself to root by typing sudo -i and entering your password
5. Enter this command and press enter to start up the module /var/packages/WireGuard/scripts/start

You should now be able to see the WireGuard package running in Package Center. Please note while I will try my best to support in relation to this module I may have to refer you on if it is a specific technical issue.

When you have GlueTUN running check the log for this line [wireguard] Using available kernelspace implementation, and you know it is working. (Does not apply to OpenVPN)

On to the next part.

Container Manager

Next we are going to set up a ‘Project’ in Container Manager, a project is used when you want multiple containers to all be loaded together and often rely on each other to function. In our case we want qBittorrent to load and talk to the GlueTUN VPN container.

Open up Container Manager and click on Project then on the right-hand side click ‘Create’

In the next screen we will set up our General Settings, enter the following:

Next we are going to drop in our docker compose configuration copy all the code in the box below and paste it into line ‘1’ just like the screenshot

services:
  gluetun:
    image: qmcgaw/gluetun:latest
    container_name: gluetun
    cap_add:
      - NET_ADMIN
    devices:
      - /dev/net/tun:/dev/net/tun
    ports:
      - 8888:8888/tcp # HTTP proxy
      - 8388:8388/tcp # Shadowsocks
      - 8388:8388/udp # Shadowsocks
      - 8090:8090/tcp # port for qbittorrent
    volumes:
      - /volume1/docker/gluetun:/gluetun
    environment:
      - PUID=1234 #CHANGE_TO_YOUR_UID
      - PGID=65432 #CHANGE_TO_YOUR_GID
      - TZ=Europe/London #CHANGE_TO_YOUR_TZ
      - VPN_SERVICE_PROVIDER=NAMEOFYOURPROVIDER
      - VPN_TYPE=wireguard #change as per wiki 
      - WIREGUARD_PRIVATE_KEY=YOUR-PRIVATE-KEY #remove if using openvpn
      - WIREGUARD_ADDRESSES=10.x.x.x #IP V4 Only - remove if using openvpn
      - SERVER_COUNTRIES=VPNSERVERCOUNTRY #Change based on the Wiki
      - HTTPPROXY=off #change to on if you wish to enable
      - SHADOWSOCKS=off #change to on if you wish to enable
      - FIREWALL_OUTBOUND_SUBNETS=172.20.0.0/16,192.168.0.0/24 #change this in line with your subnet see note on guide.
#      - FIREWALL_VPN_INPUT_PORTS=12345 #uncomment or remove this line based on the notes below
      - UPDATER_PERIOD=24h
    network_mode: synobridge
    labels:
      - com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable=false
    security_opt:
      - no-new-privileges:true
    restart: always

  qbittorrent:
    image: linuxserver/qbittorrent:latest
    container_name: qbittorrent
    environment:
      - PUID=1234 #CHANGE_TO_YOUR_UID
      - PGID=65432 #CHANGE_TO_YOUR_GID
      - TZ=Europe/London #CHANGE_TO_YOUR_TZ
      - WEBUI_PORT=8090
      - UMASK=022
    volumes:
      - /volume1/docker/qbittorrent:/config
      - /volume1/data/torrents:/data/torrents
    network_mode: service:gluetun # run on the vpn network
    depends_on:
      gluetun:
        condition: service_healthy
    security_opt:
      - no-new-privileges:true
    restart: always

What is a Docker Compose?!

The code we just dropped into Container Manager defines how we want each of the container’s setup. It is broken down into sections such as ports we want to access, which folders we want the container to use and what some variables to define where we live and settings for the container known as ‘Environment’ variables.

We will now make some important edits!

IDs and Timezone

First look for the lines below, they appear twice each, these control the containers access to our filesystem and also the user the containers run as.

Ports and Proxies

In the top Gluetun section you will notice that we have some additional ports assigned for a http proxy and Shadowsocks Proxy – this means you can direct traffic from other devices or applications on your network through the container! If you want to use these change the following.

Firewall Outbound Subnet

This section controls your ability to access the UIs of any containers running through the GlueTUN containers network.

      - FIREWALL_OUTBOUND_SUBNETS=172.20.0.0/16,192.168.0.0/24

The first part ‘172.20.0.0/16’ don’t edit as this is our ‘synobridge’ network and allows other containers such as Radarr to access the download client.

We need to change the second IP after the , this allows us to access the WebUI and containers via out local network.

This IP address (subnet) is easy to figure out. If you NAS IP is 192.168.0.27 your subnet is 192.168.0.0/24 (notice I just changed the last number before the /24 to 0)

Firewall Input Ports (Port Forwarding)

This line is #commented out by default, if your VPN provider offers port forwarding remove the # from the start of the line and change the port number(s) in line with the ones provided to you. Make sure you also manually update the ‘Listening Port’ in qbit once you are running.

If you use ProtonVPN see the FAQ for some port forwarding extra steps you need to do!

      - FIREWALL_VPN_INPUT_PORTS=12345,56789

Volumes

By default, I have assumed you have your config files stored on /volume1 if these are located on another volume amend these lines accordingly.

      - /volume1/docker/gluetun:/gluetun
      - /volume1/docker/qbittorrent:/config
      - /volume1/data/torrents:/data/torrents      

Watchtower Exclusion

You don’t need to change this, I added a label to avoid Watchtower automatically updating the GlueTUN container as it will always break the overall project which can be inconvenient if you are not around to fix it. You can update the container using the mini guide on the left menu of the site.

    labels:
      - com.centurylinklabs.watchtower.enable=false

Important – Provider Specific Edits

This next bit is important and if you don’t pay attention to the details you will have a harder time connecting up to your VPN provider

Open up the GlueTun Wiki and in the list find your provider.

Let’s use AirVPN as our example.

On the page you will see a number of key sections highlighting the variables that work with AirVPN. This is important as they can vary per provider so read everything on your providers page. (See the FAQ for the steps to get AirVPN Wireguard Details)

Key differences are generally the SERVER_COUNTRIES / SERVER_CITIES etc as they will vary so use the correct setting, your provider should have a list of Countries and Cities they support.

I have provided some common defaults in the compose for you but you need to amend them in line with your providers page.

      - VPN_SERVICE_PROVIDER=NAMEOFYOURPROVIDER
      - VPN_TYPE=wireguard
      - WIREGUARD_PRIVATE_KEY=YOUR-PRIVATE-KEY
      - WIREGUARD_ADDRESSES=10.x.x.x
      - SERVER_COUNTRIES=VPNSERVERCOUNTRY

If your provider is not supported, you can make a request on GitHub to add it, or you can follow the custom providers guidance on GlueTUNs WIKI.

Once you have checked for your provider, make the appropriate edits to the compose accordingly.

That completes the edits to the compose!

Click ‘Next’

You do not need to enable anything on the ‘Web portal settings’ screen click ‘Next’ again

On the final screen click Done which will begin the download of the container images and once downloaded they will be launched!

The images will now be downloaded and extracted. You should see ‘Code 0’ when it has finished.

You will now see your vpn-project running both containers should have a green status on the left-hand side.

Error: “gluetun is unhealthy”

At this stage if you receive an error relating to GlueTUN being unhealthy there is likely an error in the config file, this usually relates to the provider specific elements. If you check the logs for the GlueTUN container it will tell you why it couldn’t connect. If you get stuck drop me a comment with a copy of the logs via https://paste.drfrankenstein.co.uk.

Firewall Exceptions

(Skip if you don’t have the Firewall configured)

If you have enabled and configured the Synology Firewall you will need to create exceptions for any containers that have a Web UI or have any incoming or outgoing connections.

Make a note of the ports used in the compose section of the guide, these will be the ones you need to create exceptions for.

(Please note this is a generic section and will not show the specific ports used in this guide however it applies in the same way)

Also, I would like to refer people to the great guide on getting the Firewall correctly configured over on WunderTechs site.

Head into the Control Panel> Security > Firewall, from here click Edit Rules for the profile you set up when you enabled the Firewall.

Next click on Create and you will see the screen below. Source IP and Action will be automatically selected to All and Allow, I will leave it up to you as to your own preference on whether you want to lock down specific Source IPs from having access. In this example we will leave as All.

You will now choose ‘Custom‘ and then the Custom button

Now select Destination from the drop-down menu, most web based containers require TCP access but check the guide as it will show the port and protocol. Then add comma separated ports. Then press OK.

Click OK a couple of times to get back to the main screen. You will see by default the new rule is added to the bottom of the list. You must always have your Block All rule last in the list as the rules are applied top down so move your container up.

You have now completed the Firewall changes and can continue with the guide.

Changing the default WebUI login and password

If you skip this step you won’t be able to log in.

Now the container has started open it in the Docker UI and go to the Log tab. Within the logs you will see the login details

Now before doing any more of the guide go to the Web UI by going to the IP of your NAS followed by port 8090 and log in. Then on the WebUI tab change the defaults to your own and save them.

Now continue on..

Final qBittorrent Setup

As we have used /data/torrents as the mount point for our downloads we need to make sure qBittorrent uses this same file path.

We need to change the file paths by editing the qBittorrent config file, before doing this stop both of the containers. Do this by selecting the Project from the main UI and under Action selecting ‘Stop’.

You can edit this file in a number of ways, but to keep the guide OS-agnostic we will be using the Synology Text Editor package which can be installed via Package Center.

Open Text Editor and browse to /docker/qbittorrent/qbittorrent and open the qBittorrent.conf then edit the file in line with the table below, once amended save the changes.

You can now bring the containers back up again by starting the project back up.

Once the containers are running you can log into the Web UI by going to the IP of your NAS followed by port 8090

e.g. 192.168.0.30:8090

Log in with the username and password you created earlier.

Now you are in the UI click on settings cog at the top of the screen, we are going to change one more directory which is the watched folder to /data/torrents/watch. You can also turn on the option ‘keep incomplete torrents in:’ which should already have /data/torrents/incoming’ prefilled.

Next we are going to set a command to run when each torrent finishes to automatically extract any .rar files (Note if you have any issues with this I would recommend using Unpackerr the guide is on the menu)

Scroll down in the options to the ‘Run external program on torrent completion’ and enter the below, it tells qbittorrent to run unrar and extract the file to the same save path as the original file. This will not delete anything, so you can continue seeding.

unrar x "%D/*.r*" "%D/"

Advanced Network Settings

The last step is to tell qBittorrent to only use the tun0 interface for its traffic, go to the Advanced tab then from the ‘Network Interfaces’ drop down select ‘tun0’ and click Apply, If this doesn’t appear the first time you may need to completely reboot your NAS.

I am not going to walk through all the other settings as you can customise these as you wish.

That’s it you are completely set up, you can now Start up the Project again from the ‘Project’ tab.

I recommend having a quick read through the FAQ as it covers some questions you may have!

FAQs

Q: How can I update the GlueTUN containers?

A: See the Updating Containers section on the menu.

Q: How do I get my AirVPN details?

## Obtaining your WireGuard or OpenVPN details

- Login to your AirVPN account and go to the Client Area
- Click on `VPN Devices` and create a new device named `GlueTUN` (you can name this anything)
- Back in the Client Area select `Config Generator` and select the following:
  - Linux
  - Turn on either WireGuard or OpenVPN
  - Choose the newly created `GlueTUN` device
  - Select your preferred Server or Region
- Click Generate and download the config file.

### WireGuard Config
- In the config file you only require the following

Address = 10.141.x.x/32 #Nothing after this part
PrivateKey = uFdxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
PresharedKey = 4s2xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Q: How can I be sure the VPN connection is working?

A: Go to the TorGuard Check My Torrent IP site, right-click on the Green banner and copy the link (it’s a Magnet link) Then add this link into qBittorrent and start the torrent. Keeping the site open after a few seconds the site will show the IP address of the connection it finds. This will be of the VPN provider not your home IP. (Please note the torrent doesn’t actually download anything it’s purely doing an IP check)

Q: I am getting the ‘errored’ status for all my torrents

This is very likely a permissions issue, go to the User and Group guide and see the permission fixes towards the bottom.

Q: Everything seems to be connected but nothing is downloading.

Try grabbing the Ubuntu torrent as that is a sure fire way of testing as generally it has over 3k seeds.

Are you using TorGuard – If so they block torrents on their US servers. Change to another country – Also while you are at it, you may need to configure port forwarding in your TorGuard account.

Q: My container doesn’t seem to start on a reboot even with the TUN script.

A: I have seen this a few times and usually relates to the VPN not completing its connection fast enough before containers using the VPN start. You can try setting an additional startup script by doing the following.

Head into Control Panel and go to Task Scheduler Click Create > Triggered Task > User Defined Task

In the ‘Task Settings’ tab enter the following and then click Save

sleep 120
docker-compose -f /volume1/docker/projects/vpnproject-compose/compose.yaml down 
wait
docker-compose -f /volume1/docker/projects/vpnproject-compose/compose.yaml up -d

Proton VPN Port Forwarding Extra Step

Proton doesn’t allow you to choose your own port for port forwarding, so we need to add another container or mod to the compose in order for this to be automatically updated for us.

(Q)GSP : Qbittorrent – Gluetun synchronised port mod

This is a newer method and requires less setup than old NATMAP container it just involves adding some extra lines to the qbit container environment variables section to enable the mod. Note you will need to circle back and update the username and password section after first setup of qbit.

Edits to the GlueTUN ‘environment variables’ section of the compose

#Remove this line from your compose
      - FIREWALL_VPN_INPUT_PORTS=12345,56789
#Add these lines to the GlueTUN Environment 
      - VPN_PORT_FORWARDING=on
      - VPN_PORT_FORWARDING_PROVIDER=protonvpn     

Edits to the qBittorrent ‘environment variables’ section of the compose

      - DOCKER_MODS=ghcr.io/t-anc/gsp-qbittorent-gluetun-sync-port-mod:main
      - GSP_SLEEP=120
      - GSP_MINIMAL_LOGS=false
      - GSP_GTN_ADDR=localhost:8000
      - GSP_QBT_ADDR=localhost:8090
      - GSP_QBT_USERNAME= #your qbit username
      - GSP_QBT_PASSWORD= #your qbit password

Q: How can I add additional services to the VPN container?

A: Adding additional containers to the VPN network is very easy. As you can see in the example below I have added Prowlarr to the bottom of the compose. The only amendments are that the ‘network_mode’ uses the Gluetun container and the ports for Prowlarr have been moved up to the Gluetun containers ports section.

Also see the separate Prowlarr guide on the left menu for setting up FlareSolver (In the Extras section)

      - 9696:9696 # add this to the ports section of GlueTUN
#add the below to the bottom of the compose
  linuxserver-prowlarr:
    image: linuxserver/prowlarr:latest
    container_name: prowlarr
    environment:
      - PUID=1234 #CHANGE_TO_YOUR_UID
      - PGID=65432 #CHANGE_TO_YOUR_GID
      - TZ=Europe/London #CHANGE_TO_YOUR_TZ
      - UMASK=022
    volumes:
      - /volume1/docker/prowlarr:/config
    network_mode: service:gluetun # run on the vpn network
    depends_on:
      gluetun:
        condition: service_healthy
    security_opt:
      - no-new-privileges:true
    restart: always

More will be added as questions come up

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