Arch Linux User Repository

UPDATE 09/19/2021: I (hkuchampudi) am not able to maintain this package any longer. Therefore, I am abandoning it so that someone else who is more interested can maintain it. The GitHub repository has also been archived.

Note: I am only the packager of this application. If you are experiencing issues with the application itself (that do not stem from how the application is packaged), please submit a support request to Windscribe directly (https://windscribe.com/support). Alternatively you can post to the official subreddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/Windscribe/).

If you have found an issue with the packaging, please open an issue on GitHub (https://github.com/hkuchampudi/Windscribe/issues) with clear steps to reproduce the error and any relevant logs. Thanks!

@eric2 Ugh... Sorry, it was my mistake, I pushed the wrong PKGBUILD during my testing late the other night. I have gone ahead and fixed it. Thanks for letting me know!

Why is the link to 32bit binary removed from the PKGBUILD file? The 32bit binary is still downloadable from Windscribe's website: https://windscribe.com/install/desktop/linux_deb_x86

@windscribe Thanks for letting me know! I have gone ahead and updated the package.

New features

À la carte location support (future feature)

Fixed bugs

iptables command output to debug log
Whitelist Windscribe API IPs in the firewall
Better handling of AUTH_FAILED
Reconnect after sleep mode
Malformed json in wssession
Don’t make needless API calls when disconnected

https://blog.windscribe.com/windscribe-linux-1-2-changelog-75f9d57291e3

We just pushed out an update that addresses the bugs mentioned here, and a few other ones. The changelog is on our blog.

@windscribe Yes, it occurs in "Windscribe CLI client v1.1 BETA". The steps to reproduce:

• sudoedit /etc/windscribe/wssession (Remove all content. Write as an empty file.)

• sudo windscribe start # error: The same stack trace as the previous windscribe 1.0 binary.

• sudo rm /etc/windscribe/wssession

• sudo windscribe start # It works.

(Thanks for your attention and putting up with my cynical, bitter attitude of the world. I did forget to mention the Windscribe has been great and keeps getting better.)

@da99 - We totally DO care about Linux users, that's why this app exists. Does this issue occur in the latest version (1.1)?

@hkuchampudi

After re-naming /etc/windscribe, I ran "sudo windscribe start". (I haven't used windscribe as a service. I'm on VoidLinux.) The binary re-created the /etc/windscribe directory with the proper JSON wssession file. The files were all owned by root:root (readable by all, editable only by root).

I suspect this is a bug in the windscribe binary and not in your package. Probably their server gave an error at one point and the file was not properly written.

I'm not going to report the error to Windscribe. I doubt they will care about Linux users. Their more profitable customers will probably be non-programmers on Windows, Macs, and Android.

Thank you for all your hard work. It's not easy maintaining anything, especially software that runs on all sorts of exotic systems.

@da99 Thanks for doing some additional investigation. After testing what you said, the error that you and @damien received does seem to stem from an empty wssession file. However I am unable to naturally reproduce this issue on my installation of Arch or a clean installation of Antergos Linux.

In order to replicate an empty wssession file, I first installed the windscribe-cli package using yaourt. After the installation process is complete, the directory /etc/windscribe should be present but empty. Next, I started the windscribe service using sudo systemctl start windscribe (which in turn executes /usr/bin/windscribe start). After starting the service, there are now 4 files in the /etc/windscribe directory: windscribed, windscribe.pid, wsout, wssession. At this point, the contents of wssession should be an empty JSON: {}. After starting the service, I am successfully able to login and use windscribe. After logging in, wssession fills up with metadata.

Next, in order to test the issue, I manually deleted the contents of wssession so that is is now an empty file. Next I restarted the service using sudo systemctl restart windscribe. At this point, checking the status of the service shows that it has failed and checking the system log shows the same error cited by @damien. This error persists until I either delete the wssession file and restart the service or delete the entire /etc/windscribe folder and restart the service. At this point the windscribe binary simply recreates the /etc/windscribe directory and the 4 files mentioned previously with wssession containing an empty JSON: {}. At this point, I am again able to login and use windscribe.

After you renamed the /etc/windscribe directory did you rerun windscribe start? Did the binary recreate the /etc/windscribe directory with the proper empty JSON in the wssession file? Did the windscribe daemon have the correct permissions to edit the files in the /etc/windscribe directory?

@damien @hkuchampudi

I had the same problem as Damien (ie Python/JSON error). I solved it by removing the directory: /etc/windscribe. (Just to be safe, I renamed it: /etc/windscribe_tmp). Everything works fine now. (I'm on VoidLinux, but this solution should work for Arch too.)

In my case, the file /etc/windscribe/wssession was empty. That file is supposed to be filled with JSON data. Which might explain the Python/JSON error.

UPDATE: Just remove the wssession file. Removing the directory isn't necessary: sudo rm /etc/windscribe/wssession