Client Update v0.15.0

Published at November 27, 2022 ·  4 min read

We’re excited to release v0.15.0 of the Packetriot client. This version include bug fixes and improvements in several areas. We’ve also been working toward refactoring the backend client library so we can introduce more features and work towards some that have been on our roadmap for some time, like an official graphical UI.

All the details are below. Thanks to users who reported issues and sent recommendations!

Client API & Docs

An HTTP API for our client has existed for some time and we are slowly rolling this feature out along with documentation.

The additions to the API include new endpoints for providing:

• Tunnel connection status from the general information can be retrieved using the info endpoint.
• New endpoints are available to control the tunnel session:
  • Starting up
  • Shutdown
  • Restarting

Our docs site has been updated with all of the details on the endpoints, parameters and example requests and responses.

We’re excited about making the client HTTP api available since it paves the way for building user interfaces. It also introduces more automation for our enterprise customers that deploy our client in their solutions.

New Flags - Custom Log Path, Client API Ports

Some of our users requested new flags to specify the location where log files are stored. By default, the path to the directory that stores the configuration is used for log giles. The new flag --log-path can be passed into the pktriot start command.

The value must be a path to a directory. The following log file will be stored in this location: acme.log, access.log and trace.log. Below is an example of using the new flag in Windows:

C:\Users\username\pktriot.exe start --log-path C:\LogFiles

And this is an exampe for Linux:

[user@host ] pktriot start --log-path /var/log/application-dir

We’ve include another new flag for customizing the listening port for the client API. By default, the listening port for the client API is 4100. This can be changed by using the flag --api-port with the command pktriot start. The value should be a positive number. An example of using this flag is below:

[user@host ] pktriot astart --api-port 5100

You can combine these new flags with the existing command to install a Windows service: pktriot windows install. This command collects flags that are passed to it and use them when creating the Windows service. If you want to specify a directory path for the log files or the client API port, you can use those respective flags to do that.

Below is an example of customizing these values when creating the Windows service.

C:\Users\username\pktriot windows install --log-path C:\Application\LogFiles --api-port 5100

New Targets

We received requests to support MIP32 and MIP64 targets for Linux and we’ve included these architecture in our official releases. You can check out the downloads page for these new targets.

We support little-endian and big-endian releases for both MIP32 and MIP64. We use the suffix -le to identify little-endian builds. The builds that do not include any suffix are the big-endian builds.

Dropping support for Windows 32-bit (WinXP)

We’ve tried to maintain support for an older Go compiler that supported building 32-bit Windows binaries. This allowed us to support very old operating systems such as Windows XP.

We are no longer going to be generally supporting this target moving forward.

Bug Fixes

We fixed an issue with the service health check for HTTPS traffic rules that used the UpstreamURL to identify the destination for network traffic. The issue we found here is that we built up the connection string to the upstream stream incorrectly.

Refactored Backend

No new functionality is introduced with this refactoring but it does allow us to maintain our client software more easily in the future. These changes will also enable us to build more customized clients for Packetriot.com and for those that license our network server Spokes.

Thanks!

Appreciate all the inputs and suggestions you’ve sent us! Let us know if we can focus on any other new features or other improvements, cheers!