• youtubeUnblock
  • Configuration
    • OpenWRT pre configuration
    • Entware
    • PC configuration
    • Firewall configuration
      • nftables rules
      • Iptables rules
    • IPv6
  • Check it
  • Flags
  • UDP/QUIC
  • Cloudflare
  • Troubleshooting
    • TV
    • Troubleshooting EPERMS (Operation not permitted)
    • Conntrack
    • NAT Hardware/Software offloading
  • Compilation
  • OpenWRT case
    • Building OpenWRT .ipk package
    • Building with toolchain
  • Kernel module
    • Building kernel module
      • Building on host system
      • Building on any kernel
      • Building with openwrt SDK
  • Padavan

youtubeUnblock

Bypasses YouTube detection systems that rely on SNI.

The program was primarily developed to bypass YouTube Outage in Russia.

The program should be used only for the YouTube platform. It is legal since access to YouTube is not officially restricted in Russia. You MUST NOT use the program for any other purpose. I respect all Russian laws and do not wish to break any.

Starting with a YouTube speedup for my laptop, this project grew into a standalone tool that unblocks YouTube on a wide variety of devices. This project has fulfilled my dream of creating a massive, highly reliable, open-source GitHub project that helps people. I value all your feedback, and that is the reason I continue to maintain it. I learned many things while developing it, such as aspects of the Linux kernel networking stack. It is truly rewarding to explore new technologies while developing a project for people. This experience is incomparable to that of working on a mere pet project.

So, please use it only for YouTube and only in accordance with the laws of your country.

If you have any questions, suggestions, or problems, feel free to open an issue.

You are also welcome to contact me directly using the links provided in my GitHub profile description; however, please contact me only if you have a special offer. For help with the program, it is preferable to make our conversation public by posting on GitHub Discussions.

The program is distributed under the GNU GPL v3 open-source license.

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by
the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.  See the
GNU General Public License for more details.

The program is for Linux only. It is also fully compatible with routers running OpenWRT.

The program is distributed in two version:

• A userspace application works on top of nfnetlink queue which requires nfnetlink modules in the kernel and firewall rules. This approach is default and normally should be used but it has some limitations on embedded devices which may have no nfnetlink support. Also this solution may break down the internet speed and CPU load on your device because of jumps between userspace and kernelspace for each packet (this behavior may be fixed with connbytes but it also requires conntrack kernel module).
• A kernel module which integrates deeply within the netfilter stack and does not interact with the userspace firewall. The module requires only netfilter kernel support but it definetly present on every device connected to the Internet. The only difficulity is how to build it. I cannot provide modules within Github Actions for each single one kernel, even if we talk only about OpenWRT versions. If you want to learn more about the module, jump on its section in the README. Whats the benefits of the kernel module? The benefits come for some specific cases: the kernel module is the fastest thing that allows us to process every single packet sent to the linux network stack, while the normal youtubeUnblock requires connbytes to keep the internet speed. Speaking about connbytes, it also requires conntrack to operate, which may be a limitation on some transit-traffic machines. Also userspace youtubeUnblock requires modules for netlink queue, userspace firewall application and modules for it. The kernel module is much simpler and requires only the linux kernel with netfilter built in.

The program is compatible with routers based on OpenWRT, Entware(Keenetic/ASUS) and host machines. The program offers binaries via Github Actions. The binaries are also available via github releases. Use the latest pre-release for the most up to date build. Check out Github Actions if you want to see all the binaries compiled ever. You should know the arcitecture of your hardware to use binaries. On OpenWRT you can check it with command grep ARCH /etc/openwrt_release.

On both OpenWRT and Entware install the program with opkg. If you got read-only filesystem error you may unpack the binary manually or specify opkg path opkg -o <destdir>.

Configuration

OpenWRT pre configuration

When you got the release package, you should install it. Go to your router interface, to System->Software, do Update lists and install youtubeUnblock via install_package button. Then, you should go to System-Startup menu and reload the firewall (You may also do it within Services->youtubeUnblock menu).

Since OpenWRT main branch switched to apk instead of opkg, but this is not released yet, here is not deploys for apk in Releases. But apk is supported in PR #196.

To make it work you should register an iptables rule and install required kernel modules. The list of modules depends on the version of OpenWRT and which firewall do you use (iptables or nftables). For most modern versions of OpenWRT (v23.x, v22.x) you should use nftables rules, for older ones it depends, but typically iptables.

The common dependency is

kmod-nfnetlink-queue

but it is provided as dependency for another firewall packages.

So, if you are on iptables you should install:

kmod-ipt-nfqueue
iptables-mod-nfqueue
kmod-ipt-conntrack-extra
iptables-mod-conntrack-extra

and of course, iptables user-space app should be available.

On nftables the dependencies are:

kmod-nft-queue
kmod-nf-conntrack

Next step is to add required firewall rules.

For nftables on OpenWRT rules comes out-of-the-box and stored under /usr/share/nftables.d/ruleset-post/537-youtubeUnblock.nft. All you need is install requirements and do /etc/init.d/firewall reload. If no, go to Firewall configuration.

Now we go to the configuration. For OpenWRT here is configuration via UCI and LuCI available (CLI and GUI respectively).

For LuCI aka GUI aka web-interface of router you should install luci-app-youtubeUnblock package like you did it with the normal youtubeUnblock package. Note, that lists of official opkg feeds should be loaded (Do it with Update lists option).

If you got * pkg_hash_check_unresolved: cannot find dependency luci-lua-runtime for luci-app-youtubeUnblock error, you are using old openwrt. Install this dummy package. Check this comment for more details.

LuCI configuration lives in Services->youtubeUnblock section. It is self descriptive, with description for each flag. Note, that after you push Save & Apply button, the configuration is applied automatically and the service is restarted.

UCI configuration is available in /etc/config/youtubeUnblock file, in section youtubeUnblock.youtubeUnblock. You may pass any args as a string to parameter args, but before it disable interactive flags (You can configurate with it but it is a way harder and I recommend to use it only with luci-app-youtubeUnblock):

uci set youtubeUnblock.youtubeUnblock.conf_strat="args"
uci set youtubeUnblock.youtubeUnblock.args="--queue-num=537 --threads=1"

To save the configs you should do uci commit and then reload_config to restart youtubeUnblock

You can check the logs in CLI mode with logread -l 200 | grep youtubeUnblock command.

In CLI mode you will use youtubeUnblock as a normal init.d service: for example, you can enable it with /etc/init.d/youtubeUnblock enable.

Entware

For Entware on Keenetic here is an installation guide (russian).

Install the binary with opkg install youtubeUnblock-*.ipk. After installation, the binary in /opt/bin and the init s