RPC issues on Debian

Hi team,

I’m currently facing issue invoking nym-vpnc binary which I cannot narrow down, could anyone help? My setup was working before updating to the latest NYM builds (1.28 over 1.26).

root@host:~# /usr/bin/nym-vpnc -V
nym-vpnc 1.28.0
root@host:~# /usr/bin/nym-vpnd -V
nym-vpnd 1.28.0
root@host:~#
root@host:~# /usr/bin/nym-vpnc info
Error: Failed to create RPC client

Caused by:
    Authentication is required to access the daemon
root@host:~# /usr/bin/nym-vpnc diagnostic run
Error: Failed to create RPC client

Caused by:
    Authentication is required to access the daemon
root@host:~#

----

root@host:~# systemctl --system status nym-vpnd.service
* nym-vpnd.service - nym-vpnd daemon
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/nym-vpnd.service; enabled; preset: enabled)
     Active: active (running) since Fri 2026-04-24 09:13:43 UTC; 4s ago
 Invocation: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
   Main PID: 807 (nym-vpnd)
      Tasks: 23 (limit: 308792)
     Memory: 24.4M (peak: 26.2M)
        CPU: 371ms
     CGroup: /system.slice/nym-vpnd.service
             `-807 /usr/bin/nym-vpnd -v run-as-service

Apr 24 09:13:43 cNYM systemd[1]: Started nym-vpnd.service - nym-vpnd daemon.

----

/var/log/apt/history.log:Upgrade: nym-vpnc:amd64 (1.26.0, 1.28.0), nym-vpnd:amd64 (1.26.0, 1.28.0), nym-vpn-app:amd64 (1.26.0, 1.28.0)

Whatever I’m asking to nym-vpnc spit the same output.
Anyone would have seen that before?

Thank you,
Regards

Looks like permissions/binary ownsership. Check what user is running the service with

cat /usr/lib/systemd/system/nym-vpnd.service

and then make sure that user has permission to access, start the nym vpn files in /usr/bin/. Likely the process needs to be root to start networking services. Check the file is owned by the user starting it in the service file.

Hi,

Thanks a lot for your help!

5.1M -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 5.1M Apr 14 00:00 nym-vpnc
 61M -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  61M Apr 14 00:00 nym-vpnd

the service unit looks fine as well TBH / manually statring the nym-vpnd daemon show’s no signs of alarming logs either.

cat /usr/lib/systemd/system/nym-vpnd.service
[Unit]
Description=nym-vpnd daemon
Before=network-online.target
StartLimitBurst=6
StartLimitIntervalSec=24
After=NetworkManager.service systemd-resolved.service

[Service]
User=root
Group=root
ExecStart=/usr/bin/nym-vpnd -v run-as-service
Restart=always
RestartSec=2

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

The .sock file is actually hit by nym-vpnc upon requests.

inotifywait -m /var/run/nym-vpn.sock
Setting up watches.
Watches established.
/var/run/nym-vpn.sock ATTRIB
/var/run/nym-vpn.sock DELETE_SELF
strace -e trace=openat,connect nym-vpnc diagnostic run 2>&1 | grep -i "sock\|run\|tmp"
connect(9, {sa_family=AF_UNIX, sun_path="/var/run/nym-vpn.sock"}, 24) = 0

I’m honestly out of ideas, if not to revert to 1.26.0 for a quick test / is that even possible? cannot find retro packages…

Thanks again

Older packages can be found on github: Releases · nymtech/nym-vpn-client · GitHub

Cheers, does that involves the nym-vpnd daemon as well ?

EDIT: yes it does

1 Like

Oki, reverting to 1.26.0 got me up again:

wget https://github.com/nymtech/nym-vpn-client/releases/download/nym-vpn-core-v1.26.0/nym-vpnc_1.26.0_amd64.deb
wget https://github.com/nymtech/nym-vpn-client/releases/download/nym-vpn-core-v1.26.0/nym-vpnd_1.26.0_amd64.deb
apt remove nym-vpnc
apt remove nym-vpnd
apt autoremove
dpkg -i nym-vpnd_1.26.0_amd64.deb
dpkg -i nym-vpnc_1.26.0_amd64.deb

and up:

nym-vpnc status
State: Connected wg to x.x.x.x:51822 [xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] → x.x.x.x:51822 [xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

A glitch within 1.28.0 perhaps ?

Lemme know,
thanks again

to narrow things down / seems to have started from 1.27.0

dpkg -i nym-vpnd_1.27.0_amd64.deb
(Reading database ... 33026 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack nym-vpnd_1.27.0_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking nym-vpnd (1.27.0) over (1.26.0) ...
Setting up nym-vpnd (1.27.0) ...

dpkg -i nym-vpnc_1.27.0_amd64.deb
(Reading database ... 33026 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to unpack nym-vpnc_1.27.0_amd64.deb ...
Unpacking nym-vpnc (1.27.0) over (1.26.0) ...
Setting up nym-vpnc (1.27.0) ...

systemctl stop nym-vpnc.service
systemctl stop nym-vpnd.service
systemctl start nym-vpnd.service
systemctl start nym-vpnc.service

nym-vpnc status
Error: Failed to create RPC client

Caused by:
    Authentication is required to access the daemon

I may miss an OS package perhaps, though on debian 13 up-to-date..

On newer NymVPN apps on Linux, you need to add device password to authenticate the connection between app and daemon. that’s likely what’s causing it.

Haa yes that sounds like well possible, would you have any documentation URL perhaps? Thanks

https://support.nym.com/hc/en-us/articles/45300085856017

We’ve this support article about the topic.

Excellent, working on 1.28.0 now

For Debian users:

# Install polkit (Debian 13 package names)
apt install polkitd pkexec

Thanks / perhaps an update of your KB may help, I saw that one but it is somewhat geared toward i3 users, i’m headless here, or oh well, SSH only.

Cheers

1 Like