wgup

Scriptable shortcuts for managing WireGuard interfaces. Works with (and alongside) wg-quick.

wgup lets you create common setups in seconds, while leaving room for advanced configurations.

NOTE: This project is an early work in progress. Features and documentation WILL be missing.

Installation

Install as a Python package:

pip install wgup

Or, install as a standalone utility:

pipx install wgup

Features

• wgup handles generation and management of keys
• wgup handles IP address pool selection and assignment
  • Of course, you can still assign pools and IPs manually. wgup's automatic assignments will work around existing manual assignments.
• wgup generates firewall rules and NATs
• wgup supplements core WireGuard tools -- it does not replace them.

Dependencies

Note: Make sure packet forwarding on your system is enabled! If you're unsure, uncomment net.ipv4.ip_forward=1 and net.ipv6.conf.all.forwarding=1 in /etc/sysctl.conf.

wgup requires Python >= 3.10, which is almost certainly included in your distro.

Ubuntu (22.04, 24.04, 26.04) / Debian (12, 13): wireguard-tools

sudo apt install wireguard-tools

Fedora (39+): wireguard-tools

sudo dnf install wireguard-tools

Arch Linux: wireguard-tools

sudo pacman -S wireguard-tools

Notes

• wgup will never open a port on your firewall. To ensure that clients can connect, make sure your interfaces' ports are open to incoming UDP traffic.

• wgup is opinionated. Certain things like the keepalive interval and the host machine's VPN address are defined by wgup. In the future I hope to provide defaults that work for most setups, while allowing customization.

• wgup is agentless. If you reconfigure an interface or a peer, you will need to export and apply the configs before they will work.

• wgup stores peer keys on the host. My reasoning is that these keys should only be used to identify the peer to the host. Keys should be unique to each interface<->peer connection, so if the host machine is compromised, its peers connections to other machines are not at risk.

• wgup stores its configuration in ~/.wgup.

• wgup allows you to perform elevated operations (copying files to /etc/wireguard and managing systemd targets for interfaces). Please take a look at the code for wgup.wireguard.CommandLine to see what it's doing.

Usage

Help

Help (hopefully helpful) exists for wgup and all its subcommands, and may be a better TLDR than this README.

Use the -h or --help flag with any command for help.

wgup --help
wgup iface --help
wgup peer --help
wgup nat --help

Managing interfaces

The following creates a new interface called "wg0". Peers will be configured to connect to "vpn.example.com:51820".

wgup iface create wg0 --host vpn.example.com --port 51820

You may also specify IP address pools for the interface to use. If you leave them out, wgup will choose random private pools to reduce the chance of a conflict.

wgup iface create wg0 --cidr4 172.31.0.0/24 --cidr6 2001:db8::/64 --host vpn.example.com --port 51820

The machine hosting the interface will always be assigned the first IP address in the pool, both for IPv4 and IPv6.

To see the interface you just created:

wgup iface show wg0

To see all interfaces managed by wgup:

wgup iface ls

To modify an interface's parameters after creating it:

wgup iface set wg0 cidr4 172.31.1.0/24
wgup iface set wg0 cidr6 2001:db8::1/64
wgup iface set wg0 name wg1

To rekey an interface (generates new keys for the interface and all its peers):

wgup iface rekey wg0

To export an interface's config for use:

wgup iface sync wg0  # syncs config to /etc/wireguard (recommended)
wgup iface export wg0 # prints config to stdout
wgup iface export wg0 --filename=wg0.conf # exports config to a file

Managing peers

To create a new peer called "laptop":

wgup peer create wg0 laptop

As is the case with interfaces, you can also specify an IP address pool for the peer to use. Usually these are single addresses (/32 for IPv4, /128 for IPv6), but it is often desirable to route a pool of addresses to a peer in more advanced setups.

If you do not specify IP addresses, wgup will choose the next available ones.

wgup peer create wg0 laptop --cidr4 172.31.0.123/32 --cidr6 2001:db8::beef/32

To see the peer you just created:

wgup peer show wg0 laptop

To see all peers on "wg0":

wgup iface ls

To modify a peer's parameters after creating it:

wgup peer set wg0 laptop cidr4 172.31.0.5/32
wgup peer set wg0 laptop cidr6 2001:db8::cafe/32
wgup peer set wg0 laptop name cooler_laptop

To rekey a peer (generates new keys for this peer only):

wgup peer rekey wg0 laptop

To export a peer's config for use:

wgup peer export wg0 laptop  # prints to stdout by default
wgup peer export wg0 laptop --filename laptop_wg.conf

Managing NATs

NOTE: After making changes to NATs, you need to export peer configs again for the new or removed routes to take effect.

To specify a physical interface to NAT traffic to:

wgup iface set wg0 nat_iface eth0

To NAT all traffic from "wg0":

wgup nat create wg0 --cidr4 0.0.0.0/0 --cidr6 ::/0

You must include either an IPv4 or IPv6 destination (or both).

To remove an existing NAT:

wgup nat rm wg0 --cidr4 0.0.0.0/0

Licensing

wgup is Free and Open Source Software, and is released under the BSD 2-Clause license. (See LICENSE)