I appreciate the input, thanks! Not wanting to spend a lot of effort parsing language with anyone, I’ll just say when I saw “INSECURE MODE,” it didn’t scream to me “this won’t work,” as much as seeing something like “Error” would have done. Being a novice in many respects, I took it as a learning experience, and again, sorry to have troubled the team on a simple matter.
Regarding the VPN, it’s not flaky; in fact, I’ve been very happy with the provider. My issue stems from a lack of ability within Network Manager or any other native Linux facility to seamlessly transition a VPN tunnel from one network interface to another when the former is no longer active. My VPN client I have on my iPhone does this; not having an Android, I presume it does there also. (Unfortunately, the provider’s Linux VPN client doesn’t do this. If there’s a VPN service that does, I’d welcome hearing about it.) The cron script I have is my attempt to duct tape a workaround. Having the firewall enforce the use of a tunnel would still require manual intervention on my part to enable that. While doable, albeit an inconvenience, I’d like to see if the script works well enough to achieve that, while not a perfect solution. I’ve seen in various forums ways of maybe doing this as well with routing rules, but I’m not savvy enough to make that happen, and I can envision scenarios where this won’t work either.
Regarding the battery life, the way I use the phone, I leave it plugged in overnight and during the day when I have it hooked up to my lapdock. I’ve basically swapped out my L13 for use of the L5. On the road, I can get at least 6 hours of runtime. If this process eats into that materially, then I may just suck it up and go back to doing this manually and add in the firewall enforcement you suggested.
Thanks again!