I want my self hosted things to use https.
For example, I have Jellyfin installed via docker, and I want it to use https instead of http.
I don't care about necessarily doing this the "right" way, as I won't be making Jellyfin or any other service public, and will only be using it on my local network.
What is the easiest way to do this? Assume everything I host is in docker.
Also a link to a tutorial would be great.
The easiest way to do it is to do it the right way with LetsEncrypt. The hardest way to do it is the wrong way, where you create your own CA, import it as a root CA into all of the machines you’ll be accessing your servers from, then create and sign your own certs using your CA to use in your servers.
Tried that once. It was not a fun route to go down. If let's encrypt ever dies it anything fine, I'll look into it again. Until then, let's encrypt all the way
Because you have to manage it on your server and all your own machines, and it doesn’t provide any value if your server is hacked. It actually makes you less safe if your server is hacked, because then you can consider every machine that has that CA as compromised. There’s no reason to use HTTPS if you’re running your own CA. If you don’t trust your router, you shouldn’t trust anything you do on your network. Just use HTTP or use a port forward to localhost through ssh if you don’t trust your own network.
You don’t have to pay anyone to use HTTPS at home. Just use a free subdomain and HTTP validation for certbot.
There are dyndns providers that support the DNS challenge that have free tiers. Those are sufficient, and you can even get wildcard certs for your subdomain that way. Perfectly sufficient for a homelab.
If needed you could use a subdomain from a free dyndns provider. And if you're going to be self hosting stuff having your own domain is probably good anyway.
Yeah I guess installing a root CA cert (or an Intermediate, depending on how complex your setup is) and automatically rotating certs upon expiry isn't the most trivial thing. With that said, dekstop linux/windows isn't a problem. You could theoretically do it on iOS too. Android recently has completely broken this method, however, and there's a fair few hoops one must jump over to insert a root CA into the Android trust store on Android 13 and later. I'd like find a way to do it just for browsers on Android using adb if possible
I agree. Get a domain name, point it to the internal address of your NGINX Proxy manager (or other reverse proxy that manages certificates that you are used to). A bit of work initially, then trivial to add services afterwards.
I didn't really need encryption for my internal services (although I guess that's good), but I kept getting papercuts with browser warnings, not being able to save passwords, and some services (eg container repository on Forgejo) just flat out refusing to trust a http connection.
With caddy you can easily set up a local issued certificate for https. It would shine a nice warming on your browser unless you install the CA certificate on the computer you use to visit the site though.
The easiest way is to pay for a public domain, use a subdomain of that which does not have an A record on the wide internet, and then use certbot to get Let's Encrypt certificates for them and auto-renew. Stuff these in your individual reverse-proxy instances (or propagate them, no idea how) and you're done
I just add my CA to my devices and use self signed certificates for stuff on my LAN. I don't want to go through all the trouble of using lets encrypt for something that's not accessible from the internet.
This is the most permanent solution. You can generate valid and trusted certs for as long as you want. Let's Encrypt is great, but you also have to configure the automation to keep renewing the certs every 30 days.
I've been doing it this way for many years, before LetsEncrypt was around. Maybe some day I will switch so I can become dependent on another third party (though I do use LetsEncrypt for public-facing services).
Yes, telling your computer to trust a certificate chain that you are responsible for securing may significantly increase your attack surface. It's easy to forget about that root cert (I actually push mine via GPO).
If you mean signed by your CA then this is me too, albeit with an intermediate CA in the middle (honestly pointless in my case, but old habits etc).
I don't host anything externally and trusting the CA certs internally is easy as Ionly need to do it on a handful of devices. This + reverse proxy keeps things tidy and uncomplicated.
Nginx Proxy Manager is probably perfect for you.
Pick a domain (like mylab.home or something), set up your home network to resolve that domains IP as your docker hosts IP.
NPM will do self-signed certs. So, you will get a "warning, Https is insecure" kinda page when you visit it. You could import NPMs root cert into your OS/browser so it trusts it (or set up an "don't warn for this domain" or something).
If you don't want per-client config to trust it, then you need to buy a domain, use a DNS that supports letsencrypt DNS-challenge, and grab certs that way (means you don't need a publicly accessible well-known route exposed)
I roll out Step CA to my workstation with an Ansible role. All other clients on the lab trust this CA and are allowed to request certificates for themselves through ACME, like LetsEncrypt.
All my services on all clients on the network are exposed through traefik, which also handles the ACME process.
When it comes to Jellyfin, this is entirely counter-productive. Your media server needs to be accessible to be useful. Jellyfin should be run with host networking to enable DLNA, which will never pass through TLS. Additionally, not all clients support custom CAs. Chromecast or the OS on a TV are prime candidates to break once you move your Jellyfin entirely behind a proxy with custom CA certificates. You can waste a lot of time on this and achieve very little. If you only use the web UI for Jellyfin, then you might not care, but I prefer to keep this service out of the fancy HTTPS setup.