Installing Netclient on a Windows OS with Wireguard dependency.

Installing Netclient on a Windows OS with Wireguard dependency

Getting the Wireguard dependency on your Windows machine when installing Netclient.

Description:

Our Netclient installers provide Wireguard as a dependency for all OS systems. Most operating systems like Linux and macOS can just have the Wireguard binary placed in the appropriate folder to run appropriately. Windows is different in that it needs the WinTun driver to facilitate the layer 3 tunneling: https://www.wintun.net/.

The best way to install Wireguard for Windows is the MSI installer provided on Wireguard's website: https://www.wireguard.com/install/. With Netmaker's current Windows MSI installer, it is not possible to run an MSI inside of an MSI. It breaks the installation. Netmaker's MSI installer can only install Netclient. Netmaker provides a Bundle to package Wireguard with Netmaker.

Note: The bundle installer is an EXE file, so if your company blocks EXE files for security reasons, you'll have to see if it can be put on the whitelist, or you will have to manually install Wireguard by itself before installing Netclient.

Steps to Reproduce

1

Grab the latest netclient_x86.msi file from the release page on https://github.com/gravitl/netclient/releases

2

Run the installer.

3

Check your programs on your Windows machine and find that Wireguard is not on there if it was not installed previously by itself.

Resolution Steps

1

Grab the bundle installer.

2

Run it and follow the prompts.

3

See that Wireguard is successfully installed with Netclient.

Impact

The inability to install Netclient with WireGuard on Windows prevents users from accessing the intended VPN functionality, potentially hindering productivity and secure network access.