this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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Current, most up-to-date guide on creating a VPS tunnel. (lemmygrad.ml)
submitted 2 years ago by RedWizard@lemmygrad.ml to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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I know that I can use 3rd party services to set up a tunnel, like Cloudflare, but I'd like to implement this myself.

I feel like every time I research this question I find all kinds of blogs / form posts across the timescape on the topic, and I'm just looking for whatever might be the most current or recommended best method of configuring a VPS tunnel. I'm behind a CG-Nat which is why I want to set one up.

If you've done this recently yourself, where did you get your info from?

Thanks!

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[–] tvcvt@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (4 children)

I don't have a particular guide to reocmmend, but assuming you have a VPS already, you'll basically need just a few components:

  • A VPN (I'd use wireguard) tunnel between your network at home and the VPS
  • A reverse proxy on your VPS (nginx-reverse-proxy is a pretty user-friendly implementation) to forward traffic to the correct host on your local network
  • A DNS record for your subdomain that points to your VPS's public IP address.

That should basically do what you need. The reverse proxy will see the domain (https://whatever.example.com) and pass it on to the machine on your local network (e.g. 192.168.1.111:8888) via a VPN connection (which will push the routes so the VPS knows how to get to your local network).

[–] RedWizard@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 2 years ago (3 children)

So here is a question: does it need to be a sub domain? Can't I redirect all traffic to the VPS? If I wanted to host a HTML website at my root domain and have it served by nginx for example, couldn't I do that?

I just see subdomain mentioned in the guides / tools I see but I don't understand why exactly.

[–] chiisana@lemmy.chiisana.net 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Doesn’t have to be a subdomain, but just good practice for hostnames to be a subdomain because hostnames generally represents a named server (subdomain) within an organization (domain). Also it makes things easier if you add additional servers in the future to just assign another hostname to the new server.

I usually do:

domain.ext - leave open, not used. servername.domain.ext - A records in DNS pointing to servers’ public addresses; (i.e. servera.domain.ext. A 10.0.0.123; serverb.domain.ext. A 10.0.0.234; etc.) service.domain.ext - CNAME to the server it is on (i.e. auth.domain.ext. CNAME servera.domain.ext

This way it is super quick for me to move entire server to different provider (update A record) or move service to another server (update CNAME record) when I need to shuffle things around.

If you’re running a public facing website, you could always CNAME your www and @ (or whatever your DNS provider uses to represent root domain) to your server specific A record entry.

[–] RedWizard@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 2 years ago

It's funny, when you explain it, my IT hat goes on and I totally get it lol. I guess the context felt different enough that I didn't get it. But I work with Windows domains all day and that's exactly how DNS operates in that environment.

Ultimately I think for a tunnel you'll end up with your records pointing to your VPS. So you'll have a *.domain.tld CNAME record and maybe a @ CNAME record and your nginx server on the other end of the tunnel would handle the routing.

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