PIAsync: A simple, respectful management tool for Private Internet Access VPN configs

PIAsync aims to be a simple and lightweight tool that automaticaly manages configuration information in the NetworkManager data domain for the VPN servers operated by Private Internet Access.

In addition, PIAsync is respectful of your user and system configuration. It will never:

• Execute any external processes
• Write anything on the filesystem itself
• Require superuser privileges
• Require native packages to be installed

All interactions with NetworkManager are performed using the latter's D-Bus API, the way it should be.

How Do I Use It?

1. Install PIAsync (you'll need Python 3 and pip):

   $ pip3 install piasync
   

2. Run it:

   $ piasync -h
   usage: piasync [-h] [-n] [-a] [-v] username cert
   
   Maintains Network Manager connections for the Private Internet Access VPN
   servers
   
   positional arguments:
     username         Username to use for the VPN connections
     cert             Path to the PIA root CA
   
   optional arguments:
     -h, --help       show this help message and exit
     -n, --dry-run    Do not manipulate the NetworkManager configuration
     -a, --all-users  Make the connections available to all users
     -v, --verbose    Output debug information
   

But Why?

Because PIA's list of servers is quite large and setting up connections manually for each one would be tedious. There are automated solutions available, but tools that write config files without my informed consent upset me very much, so I wanted a tool that would not do that.

Shout Outs

• PIASync uses jeepney for interacting with NetworkManager over D-Bus.
• The requests library is used to download fresh configuration information from the PIA website.
• Lastly, countrynames is used to match the names given by PIA to its servers to a country code for the purpose of injecting a cute Emoji flag in the user-visible connection name.