🌐 BetterPulse VPN Script

An improved alternative to the Pulse Secure client, enabling VPN connection via OpenConnect with fine-grained and selective network routing.

🎯 Key Feature

Unlike most VPN configurations that route all internet traffic through the VPN tunnel, this script is designed to:

• Route only specific subnets through the VPN
• Maintain the rest of the traffic via the original default route
• Allow granular route configuration

This approach is particularly useful for:

• 🏢 Accessing corporate resources without impacting personal internet browsing
• ⚡ Optimizing performance by avoiding unnecessary traffic routing through VPN
• 🔒 Maintaining better security by clearly separating flows

🚀 Features

• 🔄 Automatic VPN connection via OpenConnect
• 🔑 Mobile token authentication support
• 🛣️ Custom routes configuration
• 🚇 Optional SSH tunnel via sshuttle
• 🧹 Clean disconnection handling
• ⚙️ INI file configuration

📋 Prerequisites

• OpenConnect
• sshuttle (optional, for SSH tunnel)
• curl
• sudo
• iproute2

🛣️ Route Management

Configuration

Routes are defined in the routes section of the vpn_config.ini file:

[routes]
routes_to_replace = 10.0.0.0/24, 192.168.0.0/24

Customization

The vpnc-script has been modified in the set_ipv4_default_route() function to:

1. Capture the existing default route
2. Add only specified routes to the VPN tunnel
3. Avoid creating a default route via VPN

To modify this behavior, you can adjust the function in vpnc-script:

set_ipv4_default_route() {
    $IPROUTE route | grep '^default' | fix_ip_get_output > "$DEFAULT_ROUTE_FILE"

    # Add routes from config file
    if [ -f /tmp/vpn_routes ]; then
        while read -r route; do
            [ -n "$route" ] && $IPROUTE route replace $(echo "$route" | tr -d ' ') dev "$TUNDEV"
        done < /tmp/vpn_routes
    fi

    $IPROUTE route flush cache 2>/dev/null
}

⚙️ Configuration

Create a ~/.config/vpn_config.ini file with the following structure:

[vpn]
host = vpn.example.com
url = https://vpn.example.com/
realm = Example
user_agent = Mozilla/5.0
accept = text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,image/webp,*/*;q=0.8
accept_language = en-US,en;q=0.5
accept_encoding = gzip, deflate, br
origin = https://vpn.example.com

[ssh_tunnel]
host = ssh.example.com
nameserver = 8.8.8.8
networks_include = 10.0.0.0/8, 172.16.0.0/12, 192.168.0.0/16
networks_exclude = 192.168.1.0/24

[routes]
routes_to_replace = 10.0.0.0/24, 192.168.0.0/24

🔧 Installation

1. Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/your-username/betterpulse.git
cd betterpulse

2. Make scripts executable:

chmod u+x betterpulse.sh vpnc-script

3. Create your configuration file:

mkdir -p ~/.config
cp vpn_config.ini.example ~/.config/vpn_config.ini

4. Edit the configuration file with your settings:

nano ~/.config/vpn_config.ini

📝 Usage

Standard connection

./betterpulse.sh

Connection without SSH tunnel

./betterpulse.sh noshuttle

🔑 Mobile Token

To save a mobile token prefix (optional):

echo "your-prefix" > ~/.mobilepassprefix

🤝 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Feel free to:

• 🐛 Open an issue
• 🔀 Submit a pull request
• 💡 Suggest improvements

📜 License

This project is under GPLv3 License. See the LICENSE file for more details.