J5 — Verifying the VPN isn't leaking

Status: Accepted · Audience: Operator

Exercises: C1 · C2

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The journey

$ lemonfiber doctor --only vpn

  ✓ gluetun tunnel up            185.65.x.x  (NL, ProtonVPN)
  ✓ qbittorrent egress matches   185.65.x.x  ← proves isolation
  ✓ forwarded port assigned      51413
  ✓ qbittorrent listen_port      51413  (matches)
  ✗ killswitch                   UNVERIFIED

    The killswitch has not been tested. Proving it works requires
    dropping the tunnel and confirming traffic stops.

    → lemonfiber doctor --only vpn --disruptive
      Takes about 10 seconds and will interrupt active torrents.

Why this is the journey that matters most

It’s the only one whose failure has consequences outside the machine. Every other silent failure in this product costs disk, time or patience. This one exposes the operator’s home IP to every peer in a swarm.

It’s also genuinely hard to verify by hand. A running Gluetun container proves nothing about qBittorrent’s traffic. Checking your IP in a browser tells you about the browser. The operator has no practical way to confirm the thing that matters — so they assume, which is exactly what P3 forbids.

How the core check works

Ask Gluetun its public IP. Ask qBittorrent, from inside its own network namespace, the same question. Compare.

Result	Meaning
Same non-home IP	Traffic genuinely traverses the tunnel
qBittorrent reports the home IP	Leaking. Critical.
qBittorrent has no connectivity	Killswitch holding — tunnel down, not leaking
Two different non-home IPs	Misconfiguration; traffic taking an unexpected path

This works because qBittorrent shares Gluetun’s network namespace. If the sharing is intact the answers must match; if it broke, the difference is immediately visible (C2-R1).

Why UNVERIFIED is not a failure — and not a pass

The killswitch line reports UNVERIFIED, not green. It hasn’t been tested, because testing it means deliberately breaking the tunnel and interrupting transfers.

Reporting it as passing would be exactly the comfortable falsehood this product exists to eliminate (C2-R7). An untested fail-closed guarantee is not a guarantee — it’s an assumption wearing a tick mark.

Not every provider can do this

The port checks above only apply where the provider offers port forwarding — ProtonVPN, PIA, PrivateVPN and Perfect Privacy. On NordVPN, Mullvad, Surfshark and most others, there is no forwarded port to check.

On those, the port lines report not-applicable, and the overall state is verified-no-pf — green, not amber (C2-R16). Nothing is broken; the operator bought a product without that feature, and the consequence was stated once when they chose it (A1-R12).

The port lifecycle, where it applies

Four things must hold, checked separately because each fails differently (C2-R4):

1. A port was granted at all.
2. qBittorrent is listening on that port.
3. It’s actually reachable.
4. It still matches after a reconnect.

Point 4 is the one that bites. The ProtonVPN forwarded port does not survive a reconnect, and a reboot is a reconnect. Without this check the stack comes back looking perfectly healthy while listening on a port the VPN no longer forwards — everything green, incoming connections silently gone.

Continuous, not just on demand

Egress matching is re-checked while torrents are active. A leak beginning after startup is still a leak, and notifies immediately at critical severity (C2-R10).

Related

• J3 Download only — where the VPN first appears
• C2 VPN verification
• B8 Autostart — post-reboot re-acquisition