Error waiting for server route to be added

[fck-gthb]

We are happy to answer your questions about the code or discuss technical ideas.

Please complete the following checklist (by adding [x]):

• I have searched open and closed issues for duplicates
• This isn't a feature request
• This is not a report about my app not working as expected

---

How can I troubleshoot this error? TimeoutError: Error waiting for server route to be added

2025-08-15T06:10:31.999601+00:00 | proton.vpn.core.connection:465 | INFO | CONN:STATE_CHANGED | Connecting
2025-08-15T06:10:37.077329+00:00 | proton.vpn.app.gtk.utils.exception_handler:257 | CRITICAL | APP:CRASH | Unexpected error.
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/usr/lib/python3.11/concurrent/futures/_base.py", line 449, in result
    return self.__get_result()
           ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/usr/lib/python3.11/concurrent/futures/_base.py", line 401, in __get_result
    raise self._exception
TimeoutError: Error waiting for server route to be added

Which place in the code should I look at?

[fck-gthb]

Ok, I see python-proton-vpn-network-manager/proton/vpn/backend/linux/networkmanager/killswitch/wireguard/killswitch_connection_handler.py:

    @classmethod
    async def _wait_for_vpn_server_route(
            cls, server_ip: str, interface_name: str, found: bool = True
    ):
        server_route = f"{server_ip} via .* dev {interface_name} .*"
        for delay in [0.5, 0.5, 1, 1, 2]:
            result = await cls._run_ip_route_command()

            if bool(re.search(server_route, result.stdout)) is found:
                return

            await asyncio.sleep(delay)

        raise TimeoutError(
            f"Error waiting for server route to be {'added' if found else 'removed'}"
        )

[fck-gthb]

Running # ip route with delay in [0.5, 0.5, 1, 1, 2, 5, 10, 15], I can see that the route gets added all right.

[jllaneras]

It seems the app cannot the ip route to reach the VPN server when the kill switch is active.
{server_ip} via .* dev {interface_name} .* is a regex and {server_ip} is replaced by the server IP you're connecting to and {interface_name} is replaced by the name of the network interface available to reach to the internet. The issue is that when running ip route with those delays, the route is not appearing there.

What distro are you using? And what's the network interface you use to reach the internet (you can list them with ip a)?

[fukc-gihtub]

The issue was caused by this line:

python-proton-vpn-network-manager/proton/vpn/backend/linux/networkmanager/killswitch/wireguard/killswitch_connection_handler.py
199:                ["/usr/sbin/ip", "route"], capture_output=True, encoding="utf-8", check=True

My distro has /bin/ip not /usr/sbin/ip. There's another place where ip gets called, and it's all right:

proton-vpn-gtk-app/proton/vpn/app/gtk/services/reconnector/network_monitor.py
42:        ["ip", "route", "get", "192.0.2.1"], check=False, capture_output=True)  # nosec B607