ELI5 resources for publishing self hosted services en (kbin.social)

So, couple years ago i started to learn about tech, programming and self hosting services thanks to redditors ( not reddit the evil corp ), and found lots of communities where they pointed me to good resources but then ended up allocating more time to learning programming to switch career into that field and finally got it.

As a passion and private needs I had set up couple of small servers for testing, but never ended up being able to actually expose them publicly in a secure way

I found some "beginner level" tutorials, but to be honest, it still was quite hard to understand.

Where can I found even lower level resources or any chat group or discord group for literal illeterates like me??

I know i can do my own research as I did for programming, but that was for landing an actual job, this is mostly for personal need, so i really cannot allocate much time into studying so much while I also have family duties and improving my coding skill for the current job

Thanks a lot

/kbin logotype
yamdwich,

Other people have said lots of useful things so I wanna just add on: nginx proxy manager is really useful for this. It's a webui that automates reverse proxying with Nginx (so that you can host multiple pages on the same machine/port) and also centralizes managing SSL certificates, including automatically obtaining them from Let's Encrypt.

Thorvid_botlakhan,
@Thorvid_botlakhan@kbin.social avatar

I tried it couple of times when i was less knowledgeable, and failed... i do need to give it another try, but I really struggle focusing on this steps...

It almost makes javascript seem quick and easy hahahah

yamdwich,

Yeah setting up a reverse proxy can be confusing, I still struggle with it sometimes. You can get away without it, but when you have your basic setup working then it's great to have.

Thorvid_botlakhan,
@Thorvid_botlakhan@kbin.social avatar

well...i failed yet again... xD
i was up until 2 am trying tweaking porkbun, cloudflare and nginx proxy manager...
Everything says it's up and running, but i keep getting
" Web server is down Error code 521 "
or
"Hmm. We’re having trouble finding that site."

Now am also late for work and only slept like 5 hours...
and what bugs me the most is that this is just the "testing " setup... when i'll finally get it working i'd have to do it all over again for the main services and private stuff :(

rastla,

I found this tutorial to be quite helpful and have used the reverse proxy stuff from here to also set up reverse proxy for immich and photoprism.
https://www.linuxcapable.com/how-to-install-jellyfin-media-server-on-linux-mint/

Took me a few tries though, especially getting the valid config AND SSL certificate in the correct order...

nnullzz,

Maybe an OS like Unraid might help. Been using it for a few years now to spin up dev servers and run some containers for personal use and have no complaints. It’s not free but it’s well worth the price. What’s nice about it is how much support you can find and that it’s pretty straightforward to get it up and running.

Thorvid_botlakhan,
@Thorvid_botlakhan@kbin.social avatar

I may have express myself poorly, sorry, was in a rush.

I got the services running fine, am still learning and testing few things but the things I need or build are available and running on local.

My issue is about publishing them online, like linking them to a domain name I bough, and pointing that to my static home IP address, and the routing for each of them
like "cloud.myhomelab.net" to point to my home IP, and then reverse proxy that to the nextcloud instance at 192.168.1.127:8080 that is a proxmox container running docker containers

I followed some of dbtech's tutorials, and tried via Porkbun and cloudflare tunnels, and just after posting this I saw that it finally propagated (after a looot of days) but can only reach one of the services I set up.

Another way i kinda heard about was not using cloudflare tunnels and redirecting the traffic to my static IP to an nginx container that then redirects the traffic inside my home lan but I really don't know how to handle security with that, and also my ISP is blocking traffic on port 80 and 443 ( "it's for our router firmware's updates..." that were like 4 years ago last update )

All the idea of how to connect my local machines to the outside world and different method and secure proofing is soo difficult to understand for my, i really can't wrap my head around on what does what

bratling,
@bratling@kbin.social avatar

This may help: https://caddy.community/t/using-caddy-as-a-reverse-proxy-in-a-home-network/9427

I am just starting the same journey and have also experienced the lack of good guides for noobs. Most guides are on integrating more complex setups.

Thorvid_botlakhan,
@Thorvid_botlakhan@kbin.social avatar

right?? so it's not just my own impression...

I know I like tech stuff and I know i can get passionate and raise my skills on my own, but I could not find any good "beginner level" resource that didn't step from a simple nice to get drawing of how things should be, to a complex mixmatch of services and settings that leaves me in doubt of what do i have to do in my instance....

Thanks for the link, i'll check it out as i get back home...
Since you are on the same journey and know about any group chat or communities that are noob approachable, i'm all ears

bratling,
@bratling@kbin.social avatar

reddit's r/homelab and r/selfhost were my go-tos, but Spez decided to kill the golden goose, so I left. I've been trying to help the Kbin and Lemmy communities grow, but we'll see how it goes…

Oh! Also Tildes! It's been established for a while but the user base isn't huge since it's still in beta. LMK if you'd like an invite.

I did find this there… indicating there is some activity around self-hosting:
https://tildes.net/~comp/16yc/self_hosters_share_your_reasons_for_self_hosting_and_favorite_apps

Thorvid_botlakhan,
@Thorvid_botlakhan@kbin.social avatar

same here about reddit, I just joined as well, and also plan on giving back to communities I enjoyed in reddit.

Unfortunately i'm kinda busy with a new job and I haven't had time yet to properly set up all my communities and start adding content :(

anyway, thanks a lot, i didn't know about tildes, i'll check it out !!

bratling,
@bratling@kbin.social avatar

Follow-up: I have Caddy working!

Here's my baseline before starting:

  • Services running on my NAS already configured
  • Domain names & DNS already hosted at Porkbun
  • Dynamic DNS in place using https://hub.docker.com/r/qmcgaw/ddns-updater
  • DNS includes wildcard support, so I can easily use anything.mydomain.net

After briefly trying out a couple of somewhat ingrated Caddy projects others have done, I decided they were too specific to their set-ups and did not make my life easier. I tossed them out and went simple. I wanted something super easy to understand, and thus easy to troubleshoot.

First I set it up in Docker. I created a really, really simple docker compose file:

version: "3.7"

services:
  caddy:
    image: caddy:alpine
    restart: unless-stopped
    ports:
      - "1080:80"       # Because Synology DSM reserves 80 for itself
      - "10443:443"     # Because Synology DSM reserves 443 for itself
      - "10443:443/udp" # Because Synology DSM reserves 443 for itself
    volumes:
      # next four lines are default
      # - $PWD/Caddyfile:/etc/caddy/Caddyfile
      # - $PWD/site:/srv
      # - caddy_data:/data
      # - caddy_config:/config
      - /var/docker/caddy/config/Caddyfile:/etc/caddy/Caddyfile
      - /var/web:/srv # serve this by default?
      - /var/docker/caddy/data:/data
      - /var/docker/caddy/config:/config

volumes:
  data:
    external: true
  config:
    external: true

(If the machine you are running Caddy on doesn't reserve ports 80 and 443 for itself like Synology DSM does, you don't need the ridiculous high ports I mapped. Just do 80:80 and 443:443.)

Then I created a simple Caddyfile.

web.fakeme.net, www.fakeme.net {
	# This connects to the default Synology web service
	reverse_proxy 192.168.2.15:80
}

This tells Caddy: When you get a request for web or www, send it to the machine at 192.168.2.15 using port 80.

Then I added to it, one service at a time to make sure things worked at each step

paperless.fakeme.net {
	reverse_proxy 192.168.2.15:8008
}

whoami.fakeme.net {
	reverse_proxy 192.168.2.15:8009
}

comics.fakeme.net {
	reverse_proxy 192.168.2.15:8010
}

plex.fakeme.net {
	reverse_proxy 192.168.2.15:32400
}

speedtest.fakeme.net {
	reverse_proxy 192.168.2.15:8011
}

You'll note I am doing nothing fancy here – no hostnames, no dynamic Docker container checks, none of that crap. It's brittle but it is dead simple.

Now that I have something simple working, I can get fancier if I feel like it.

Thorvid_botlakhan,
@Thorvid_botlakhan@kbin.social avatar

wow, thanks for all the help!! Man, i misssed this kind of community feel for the last like...4 years.

I just woke up and saw this comment, as i get back from work i'll test it.
Yesterday I've tried making nginx proxy manager and cloudflare work, since I had already tried them couple of times, but still, i get to the same point and can't really figure out why I either get "Hmm. We’re having trouble finding that site." or " Web server is down Error code 521 "

Thorvid_botlakhan,
@Thorvid_botlakhan@kbin.social avatar

welp... i go to fail this too... xD

read the documentation you listed
dug around the official docs setting up and getting informed beforehand

I read about testing to the staging letsencrypt api, but then forgot to add that

ran the container, it failed to get ssl certificates, but it blocked me in less than 20 seconds

I then changed some configs, since i was testing different ways of how it might work, but even after switching to the staging api for letsencrypt, i still receive logs saying it is refused and on timeout

ERR ts=1688509895.6641216 logger=tls.obtain msg=will retry error=[nextcloud.mysite.com] Obtain: [nextcloud.mysite.com] solving challenge: nextcloud.mysite.com: [nextcloud.mysite.com] authorization failed: HTTP 400 urn:ietf:params:acme:error:dns - DNS problem: NXDOMAIN looking up A for nextcloud.mysite.com - check that a DNS record exists for this domain; DNS problem: NXDOMAIN looking up AAAA for nextcloud.mysite.com - check that a DNS record exists for this domain (ca=https://acme-staging-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory) attempt=2 retrying_in=120 elapsed=66.535909489 max_duration=2592000

ERR ts=1688509906.5700405 logger=tls.obtain msg=unable to unlock identifier=sp.mysite.com lock_key=issue_cert_sp.27082019.xyz error=remove /data/caddy/locks/issue_cert_sp.mysite.com.lock: no such file or director

i just might be cursed

psychopomp,
@psychopomp@kbin.social avatar

For "routing" your IP to your domain URL, you need to set up an A record in the DNS settings of your registrar: https://www.cloudflare.com/en-gb/learning/dns/dns-records/dns-a-record/

(Provided you really do have a static IP, with DSL or cable connections you get a dynamic IP (either every day or with a reconnect). Then you'd need to look up something called "Dynamic DNS".)

Then you need to forward some ports to your local machine, that is done in your router. Usually you can map any external port to any internal port, so you would just route all traffic that comes in on e.g. port 8000 to your local machine on port 80. (On a sidenote: what ISP blocks ports 80 and 443, lol? I'd switch ISP if possible).

But your choice of internal ports don't really matter, because that's job is better left to the reverse proxy. I'd suggest "Nginx Proxy Manager", which is a nginx proxy with a very nice GUI that comes as a docker. It makes routing ports and especially obtaining SSL certificates a breeze. I find that way more accessible than traefic or caddy or basic nginx. You'll find lots of tutorials for this.

So to recap: connect IP to URL with a DNS record at the domain registrar, forward some ports in your router, which ones doesn't really matter because you can just "bend" them anyway you like with the reverse proxy.

Thorvid_botlakhan,
@Thorvid_botlakhan@kbin.social avatar

thanks a lot for the easy recap !!
I remember hearing and checking out Nginx Proxy Manager while following tutorials some mention that, but i found the tutorials kinda awkward at the time and didn't fully understand what it was for ( it was kinda of a long time ago tbh ).

As for the ISP, it is Fastweb, in italy, and is kinda a bummer, they rely on Telecom's FTTC network ( meaning the cable and cabinets infrastructure ) for their service, so i can either choose Fastweb ( kinda good pricing since I only have internet and no home phone ) or Telecom's pricing are like and armed robbery, where the fixed price you sign is already higher, and is full of hidden paid service that pop up every now and again and it gets you mad on how many times you have to call their customer service to either remove those service or claim refund.

Other ISPs in my area don't have fiber connection and top to like 5 Mbs downloads on a good day.

Anyway, thanks a lot!

psychopomp,
@psychopomp@kbin.social avatar

sure thing.

one more thing you might want to look into would be a VPN. setting up a wireguard VPN docker is not that difficult as well: https://github.com/linuxserver/docker-wireguard

there are some pros and cons about this:

  • pro: much more secure than having a nextcloud directly exposed to the internet! especially if you don't have an intrusion prevention system (e.g. fail2ban).
  • pro: saves you the hassle of DNS records, routing ports, SSL certificates. You only need to forward one port (usually UDP 51820) from your router to your local machine, and the wireguard client on your remote computer connects directly to your static IP.
  • pro: once you're connected to the VPN you can access your nexctloud directly at 192.168.1.127:8080
  • con: a bit less comfortable, since you cannot just open a browser and go to mybeautiful.homeserver.com, you need to connect to the VPN first
  • con: not as easy for sharing stuff, you cannot just say "here mamma, go to mybeautiful.homeserver.com, log in with user/password and then you can see my holiday pictures".

depends on your use case. if you're all alone on the nextcloud or have technical people accessing it, I would definitely suggest the wireguard VPN

Thorvid_botlakhan,
@Thorvid_botlakhan@kbin.social avatar

thanks again for the clarification.
I have used a wireguard instance for my father's synology couple years ago following some tutorials since his account was having problems using the synology quickconnect for some reason ( solved by the support )

Anyway, yeah I remember it was kinda of an hassle to setup and explain to him multiple times the process...and to be honest i quite forget most of it myself...

On Android one can't just run one app via vpn right??
like tunneling just the nextcloud app and leavin the rest alone..

psychopomp,
@psychopomp@kbin.social avatar

Not on Android here, but a quick search says yes, it’s possible: https://help.rapidseedbox.com/en/articles/6810079-split-tunneling-with-wireguard-on-android

Thorvid_botlakhan,
@Thorvid_botlakhan@kbin.social avatar

wow, thanks!

guess it was not as obscure as I thought...

Right now i'm following step by step the nginx proxy manager tutorials, reeeaally reeeally slowly so i can take notes for the next time, and undertsanding better

Hope not to screw it up again xD
I really need nextcloud and my data at hand, i'm so tired of having thigns scattered between google drive, keeps, notion, calendars etc...

  • Todo
  • Suscrito
  • Moderado
  • Favoritos
  • •
  • random
  • selfhosted@kbin.social
  • noticiascr
  • CostaRica
  • Todos las revistas
    •