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How to install Mullvad VPN on distrobox under SteamOS 3.7.13 (piefed.social)
submitted 11 months ago by to c/steamdeck@sopuli.xyz
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I installed Fedora 43 with this command distrobox create -i registry.fedoraproject.org/fedora:43 --init --additional-packages "systemd" -n test then I installed Mullvad VPN with these commands sudo dnf config-manager addrepo --from-repofile=https://repository.mullvad.net/rpm/stable/mullvad.repo and sudo dnf install mullvad-vpn. Once it's finished, I tried to type mullvad status but it gives an error message

Error: Management RPC server or client error  

Caused by:  
         0:   transport error  
         1:   No such file or directory (os error 2)  
         2:   No such file or directory (os error 2)

How to solve this issue ? I just want to use mullvad-cli

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[–] 4 points 11 months ago

IF you want to use it then install it normally on steam os, don't use containers for this kind od stuff

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    [–] 4 points 11 months ago*

    Just add the vpn config through the UI, no need for all of that.

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    [–] 4 points 11 months ago (7 children)

    A few options:

    • Installing in SteamOS directly - this should work, but will have to be redone every time steamOS updates. Some things like rwfus are meant to let you install things without them getting wiped, but that may or may not work. You can also create an installation script so you would just need to run a single file after a SteamOS update to restore everything.

    • Try installing through nix. The deck has nix support, and nix has both mullvad client and the mullvad cli client.

    • Just use the mullvad provided wireguard/openvpn files. In desktop they should be usable through the network manager, in game mode there's a Decky plugin called TunnelDeck.

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  • [–] [S] 1 point 11 months ago (6 children)

    I think I will opt for the second solution. Nix is ​​not installed under SteamOS 3.7, how to correctly install nix with mullvad vpn without having issues ?

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (5 children)
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  • [–] [S] 1 point 11 months ago (4 children)

    I followed his instructions up to step 3 but when I typed nix --version , it says bash: nix : command not found . Did I make a mistake ?

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (3 children)

    If you didn't see any major errors when running the previous command, then you maybe just need to restart your deck (or alternatively log out and log back in).

    Especially when installing things through non-normal means, the path may not have updated for something newly installed.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 11 months ago (2 children)

    nix and mullvad vpn are installed on my steam deck under steamos 3.7 now but it's the same issue as before (Management RPC server or client error). Also I can open the Mullvad VPN GUI application which works but there is a message on the app :

    Unable to contact the Mullvad system 
service, your connection might be unsecure. 
Please troubleshoot or send a problem 
report by clicking the "Learn more" button.

    I don't know how to solve this issue

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  • [–] 1 point 11 months ago (1 child)

    Alright, so I probably can't help you with this without having some personal hands on experience with it.

    What's probably happening is it's trying to install a system level systemd service, but you can't due to the steam deck being locked down. Your options would be to unlock the filesystem, find a way to install the Mullvad systemd service as a user instead, or figure out how to use systemd-sysext to install I as a system extension separate from the immutable filesystem.

    Of those, I'm guessing the best solution would be the middle option, assuming you can get the right systemd mullvad-daemon.service file. Once you have it, it could be placed in ~/.config/systemd/user/ and enabled with systemctl --user enable mullvad-daemon.service. But as stated, the catch is you need the mullvad-daemon.service file, and I'm not sure the best way to do that. Maybe you could unlock the filesystem , let it install it as a system level service, and then convert it to a user level service? Either way it's complicated and I'd have to mess around with it myself to figure out what would work.

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  • [–] [S] 2 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

    I found the mullvad-daemon , nix-daemon files in /nix/store/svf..............-user-environment/bin/mullvad , I don't know that's it. I copied and pasted both files into ~/.config/systemd/user/ then I open the terminal from ~/.config/systemd/user/ , I typed systemctl --user enable mullvad-daemon.service, it says : Failed to enable unit: Unit mullvad-daemon.service does not exist

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    • [–] 1 point 11 months ago*

    I use Bazzite, and I've had to install Mullvad manually using a local rpm package downloaded from their site. Works fine like that.

    Only annoyance is that I have to repeat the process manually when the app updates, but there is always a banner saying a new version is available, and it takes like 2 min to remove the old version, install the new local package, and then reboot. Use rpm-ostree command to install/uninstall.

    Edit: I guess it might be different on SteamOS given that it's Arch based instead of Fedora... Not sure if it works in a distrobox.

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