tldr: I'd like to set up a reverse proxy with a domain and an SSL cert so my partner and I can access a few selfhosted services on the internet but I'm not sure what the best/safest way to do it is. Asking my partner to use tailscale or wireguard is asking too much unfortunately. I was curious to know what you all recommend.
I have some services running on my LAN that I currently access via tailscale. Some of these services would see some benefit from being accessible on the internet (ex. Immich sharing via a link, switching over from Plex to Jellyfin without requiring my family to learn how to use a VPN, homeassistant voice stuff, etc.) but I'm kind of unsure what the best approach is. Hosting services on the internet has risk and I'd like to reduce that risk as much as possible.
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I know a reverse proxy would be beneficial here so I can put all the services on one box and access them via subdomains but where should I host that proxy? On my LAN using a dynamic DNS service? In the cloud? If in the cloud, should I avoid a plan where you share cpu resources with other users and get a dedicated box?
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Should I purchase a memorable domain or a domain with a random string of characters so no one could reasonably guess it? Does it matter?
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What's the best way to geo-restrict access? Fail2ban? Realistically, the only people that I might give access to live within a couple hundred miles of me.
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Any other tips or info you care to share would be greatly appreciated.
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Feel free to talk me out of it as well.
EDIT:
If anyone comes across this and is interested, this is what I ended up going with. It took an evening to set all this up and was surprisingly easy.
- domain from namecheap
- cloudflare to handle DNS
- Nginx Proxy Manager for reverse proxy (seemed easier than Traefik and I didn't get around to looking at Caddy)
- Cloudflare-ddns docker container to update my A records in cloudflare
- authentik for 2 factor authentication on my immich server
"NPM" node package manager?
I don't know how markdown works. that should be 1,3,4,5
nginx proxy manager
I was reading this and thinking node package manager too and I was both confused and concerned that somebody would sit all of their security on node package manager!
That makes much more sense 🙂
there's so many acronyms. Thanks
Authentication with NPM is pretty straightforward. You basically just configure an ACL, add your users, and configure the proxy host to use that ACL.
I found this video explaining it: https://youtu.be/0CSvMUJEXIw?t=62
NPM unfortunately has a long-term bug since 2020, that needs you to add a specific configuration when setting up the ACL as shown in the video.
At the point where he is on the “Access” tab with all the allow and deny entries, you need to add an allow entry with
0.0.0.0/0as IP address.Other than that, the setup shown in the video works in the most recent version.