Reverse Proxy Help/Advice
reddit / selfhosted

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meddig0 · 2023-10-10 07:47

*Solved.*

I have NPM working and pointing to a couple of docker services
already, such as a Rainloop container.

I'd like to now host either an Apache or Nginx container for a PHP
site I'm building. For the life of me I can not get NPM to proxy to
one of these containers. I've tried every article and tutorial I can
find to no avail. The browser just says "We can’t connect to the
server at [sub.domain.com](https://sub.domain.com/)".

If I expose the ports (eg 8000:80) in the composer YML I can at least
go to [domain.com](https://domain.com/):8000 and get a "File not
found" message. I've tried proxying to both the container name (like I
have done with Rainloop) and the internal network IP directly.

Has anyone done this or can anyone point me in the direction of the
one guide I've overlooked that will help or am I just simply barking
up the wrong tree and I should just build a normal LAMP stack and
forget about using NPM for this?

Thanks.

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Bekar_vai · 2023-10-10 08:57

Did add a dns entry for you subdomain pointing to your ip?

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meddig0 · 2023-10-10 09:07

You know when you get hit with a quick oneliner that makes you realise
that, for the last few hours of work, you've just been banging your
head against a wall that isn't going to budge?

Thank you, kind stranger, for not making me feel like *too much* the
fool.  I'm going to go and set this up now...

Fucking DNS entry... what a moron I am.  Ironically, for work we
install servers into clients networks and guess what job isn't done by
the client 9 out of 10 times?

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thekrautboy · 2023-10-10 09:12

A mistake i see many beginners making is to point the reverse proxy at
the wrong container port.

So assuming your NPM and Apache are both running as containers and
both on the same Docker host. Place them together in a Docker network,
typically you create a dedicated network "proxy" or something, then
add only those containers to it that will actually get proxied. Then
NPM needs to point at the internal container port of Apache, not the
external which is just a mapping on the Docker host for access without
the proxy.

So in your example of 8000:80 then NPM needs to point at 80, not 8000.

In addition, once the proxy setup is working you can (and probably
should) remove the entire port mapping. Unless you need direct access
to that Apache, bypassing the proxy.

And you absolutely should use the container name as hostname to point
the proxy at Apache, not a Docker IP. Grz used to defining useful and
unique containernames for your services in your Docker compose files.

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meddig0 · 2023-10-10 09:12

Shockingly, I know, that has worked.

Thank you again!

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meddig0 · 2023-10-10 09:23

Thanks for your reply, another comment, and your final paragraph, was
what I had forgotten. Just a DNS entry.

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Bekar_vai · 2023-10-10 09:25

welp, as all great sysadmin like to say [It's always
DNS](https://i.redd.it/sxudzlhamha51.png)

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meddig0 · 2023-10-10 09:26

It makes for a wonderful whipping post!

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thekrautboy · 2023-10-10 09:28

Good.

Fyi if you find that most of your redirecting happens to the same
Docker host (IP) you can consider adding a single wildcard CNAME `*`
to your DNS, and that will redirect any undefined subdomain to the
proxy.

And it was probably just a bad example used by you, but please do not
use things like `sub.domain.com` even for your private home network.
Just TLD that are designated for that, such as `example.lan` or
`example.private` or `example.home.arpa`. Or if you want to add valid
SSL certs from Lets Encrypt to your NPM later on, you need to use
existing domains which you actually own. Can be done simply with a
free provider like duckdns.org or dedyn.io and you get a setup like
`apache.local.example.dedyn.io`