Selfhosted @lemmy.world rambos @lemm.ee 1y ago

NPM and SSL for local use only

[SOLVED] I had to open ports 80 and 443 (maybe 1 was enough, idk) while renewing certs ! Now its time to learn how to do it without opening ports (:

Hey guys, I have nginx proxy manager running in docker container on my home server. I don't have any ports open (other than wireguard) and I was using custom local domain .tride to access my services. Everything works fine, I can use https://portainer.tride, https://homeassistant.tride, etc.

I want to get rid of warnings about the risk that I have to accept to continue. Not a big deal for Firefox on desktop, but its kinda annoying on Android. Also I think it stops me from using some services that require SSL certs (like floccus). I tried to create a LetsEncrypt certificate using DNS challenge and DuckDNS in NPM. I also tried to download certs and import to Android, CA cert is added successfully, but didn't work.

Now I bought example.com domain from porkbun.com and trying to set it up:

Created CNAME on porkbun - *.example.com pointing to my example.duckdns.org
Created cert using same procedure (DNS challenge and DuckDNS in NPM) with hosts *.example.com and example.com
Created Local DNS records in PiHole

Now I get strange behavior, sometimes I can open portainer.example.com with no problem, no warning, perfect. Then sometimes it doesn't load at all and it says "Server Not Found". Some services open normally, but like bookstack.example.com opens broken page and if I click anywhere it redirects me to my old bookstack.tride (still exists in NPM and PiHole) and asking to accept the risk.

I'm trying to use services from local network or wireguard only, at least for now.

I am also using the same domain for my e-mail at mailbox.org if that matters. Not sure what I'm doing wrong, but I'm sure there is something. I'm happy to listen any suggestion, and sorry for being noob <3

26 comments

Thanks all for many useful tips. Sorry, I had some crap going on today so I need to postpone this for tomorrow. Didn't want to be rude by not replaying to your comments. Cya tomorrow <3
I use nginx proxy manager with dns challenge to get a *.example.com cert that I then use to host services internally. I just checked, it supports dns challenge for porkbun, you may want to give it a try again. Also, you shouldn't really need to forward dns to duckdns. You can have public dns records point to an internal ip.

This is what I do, I have example.com (dns registered with cloudflare but should work the same with porkbun) I then create an a record for portainer.example.com to 192.168.0.5.

Internally my nginxproxymanager is running at 192.168.0.5 and portainer is running at https://192.168.0.6:9443

Then in nginxproxymanager I create a dns challenge (you'll have to look up some videos on how to do this, it's not very difficult it usually just takes a api key and secret key) then I create a new proxy host for portainer.example.com pointing to https://192.168.0.6:9443 and you select the *.example.com as your ssl cert for the proxy host

Now internally go to https://portainer.example.com and it should work.
- Thank you! It does support porkbun, but I don't have any "porkbun service" running on my server, but I do have duckdns (using it for VPN). Is that kind of service even necessary here? I tried using porkbun api key and it didn't help, but opening ports did. I opened ports 80 and 443 and closed them after cert (with duckdns challenge tho). Also I made A record *.example on porkbun, seems better for my needs.
  
  You can have public dns records point to an internal ip.
  
  I tried pointing *.example.com to my local IP 192.168.0.40 but porkbun doesn't allow me that, maybe I misunderstood this part. I sorted out the problem, thank you anyway <3
  
  So the opening of ports works, but it's not the most secure or best way to do it imo.. what happens is the certbot registers with letsencrypts api and attempts to request a cert via http challenge, it then hosts a small website with a code from letsencrypt to prove that you do in fact own the domain and are who you say you are. Let's encrypt then goes to the url, verifies it sees the text, and issues a cert to the certbot. The problem here is you have to open these ports to the internet, and they need to be open when certificates are renewed (let's encrypt only issues a 90 day cert).. if you want to leave those ports open that's not exactly a safe practice, and manually doing it every 3 months is less than ideal..
  
  With dns challenge, the certbot uses the api of your dns provider (cloudflare or porkbun), the process is similar, it talks with letsencrypt, let's encrypt gives it a string and a dns record it expects to see, then certbot talks to your dns, makes a txt record with the string provided, then let's encrypt checks for that dns record, if it finds it, it issues a cert to the certbot. In this scenario, certbot is connecting out to your dns provider and making the record for you, no opening of ports. And if you leave the api key active, it will auto renew on a schedule so you don't have to really worry about it.
  
  I highly recommend looking into dns challenge some more, watch some videos on it there are lots on YouTube.
  
  As for the dns record, not sure if it's not allowing the wildcard record or what but I wouldn't use *.example.com, make an entry for the actual host/service you are hosting, like portainer.example.com.

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters	More Letters
DNS	Domain Name Service/System
HTTP	Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the Web
IP	Internet Protocol
PiHole	Network-wide ad-blocker (DNS sinkhole)
SSL	Secure Sockets Layer, for transparent encryption
VPN	Virtual Private Network
nginx	Popular HTTP server

6 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 6 acronyms.

[Thread #79 for this sub, first seen 24th Aug 2023, 13:25] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

For your local PiHole DNS, where are your records for your domain pointing? I believe you should have an A record for *.example.com that points to the IP of your NPM server and then an MX which points to the IP of your mail server. If this is already the case then you can ignore this.

Also, if you are using DHCP do not have it assign your public domain to any of your hosts because that could screw up name resolution as well.
- I did try A record *.example.com but back then I didn't open ports on router so It didn't work. Later on a switched to manually adding DNS records in pihole GUI 1 by 1. I might try A record another time. Thanks.
  
  I have set static local IP for my server so I guess I'm safe, but thank you for tips <3
I'm not sure about anything you're running but I would look into certbot.

Either using the basic web plugin or DNS plugin. Nginx would be simpler, you'd just have to open your web ports on certificate generation to pass the challenge.

I know some proxy tools have let's encrypt support, such as traefik.
- Thanks! I'm lost a bit honestly, but your comment sounds useful. Do I just open port 443 before I generate certificate and then close the port right after? That would make sense, but not sure is that the way. I'm not getting any error when doing the same with closed ports. Is there a way to check if cert passed the challenge?
  
  I was reading about certbot, but all guides are for CLI. I use NPM with GUI and I'm just confused how these 2 talk to each other. I have to point SSL to each host I make in NPM afaik.
  
  I don't mind trying traefik if thats a suggestion, but prefer not if possible since I'll probably need to remove NPM first.
  
  Ports 80 and 443.
  
  The cli is easy and you could just Cron (scheduled task) a bunch of commands to open the firewall, renew cert and close the firewall. It's how I do it for some internal systems.
  
  I think you'd need to open port 80 since certbot needs to be able to "see" your site to verify you own it before generating the certificate. Once it does its thing you can close the ports from public access (leaving it open on your LAN) again though
Maybe you could also try to generate your one SSL certificate and add it to your Android/Linux/Windows devices as root certificate 🤷🏼‍♂️.

That's only a possibility, of you're willing to do this to every single device that should be able to connect to your services
- I am willing to do that for every single device I use, but how can I do that? I have 3 options to install (android 12): CA certificate, VPN & app user certificate and Wi-Fi certificate
  
  I can download cert from NPM, I get 4 files, but only one can be installed (at least the way I tried)
- This is what I do only because cryptography it’s a big weakness of mine so I wanted to work through it to understand it. I ended up setting up a raspberry pi with Debian and went at it with guidance from a YouTube video. Notice I said guidance, to get started. From there, I built my own CA server and issue certs to my services, upload the certs to NPM and apply them to the services I need.
  
  Documented every step of the way and made templates out of config files.
  
  It’s not the sexiest solution BUT I have a way better handle on cryptography than I did before.
  
  Thanks! This sounds like approach I would prefer, but tbh I'm overwhelmed with information and I'm happy my setup is working for now. I will defo look into local CA server when I get more familiar with everything.
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/nOSl4dmywe8?si=XxBLwPNlq-wt2swR
  
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  
  I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.

26 comments