File browser config trouble reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mocha-0 · 2023-11-26 19:17 I'm gonna start this off by admitting that I am not a smart man, I'm a windows user and I rarely ever use a command terminal, so if you are kind enough to help me out please have patience with me. I've spent a good portion of today trying to find some sort of self hosted file sharing thing and eventually I found Filebrowser, so I downloaded their executable and ran it and I managed to get it mostly working how I want. However it all started going downhill when I tried to connect from outside my network. I know how to portforward so I opened up port 8080 but no luck. I figured out that I need to change the address it listens to but I have no idea how to change the config. I've looked through their documentation and I can see the commands I need to use but I have no idea how to use them, I've tried command prompt and the shell on the site. Thanks in advance ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SawkeeReemo · 2023-11-26 21:28 I don’t have time to deep dive with you right now unfortunately, but I will say if you don’t know some of these basics, you most certainly should not be opening ports on your router. Especially not for an app that has access to your files! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lilymac86840919 · 2023-11-26 21:58 if you're struggling with the config, try looking up some video tutorials on YouTube for a step-by-step guide. It helped me out when I was in a similar situation. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mocha-0 · 2023-11-26 22:33 Thanks for your concern. In theory my planned usage of Filebrowser shouldn't leave me open to any attacks, as long as I keep it updated. But you have made me realise I didn't know much about the security risks of port forwarding, so I've done a bit of research and it seems to me that an attack seems unlikely with my current setup but there are definitely steps I can take to improve it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mocha-0 · 2023-11-26 22:45 Thanks for your comment, I have looked around a fair bit for some sort of tutorial but they all seem to be using linux or docker or both. I'm trying to get the windows executable that you can download from the filebrowser github to work but there doesn't seem to be any documentation for it. I tried to use docker earlier but It was crashing on launch even after a reinstall. It's something I should look back into but if possible I'd like to get the win executable to work. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- SawkeeReemo · 2023-11-27 01:01 You shouldn’t be forwarding ports unless you absolutely have to. Either use a VPN or learn how to set up reverse proxy with some sort of auth front end like Authelia. The combination of NGINX Proxy Manager and Authelia seems to be the most common and user friendly way to accomplish this currently. I used to make the same mistake as you, and I wish someone told me about this sooner. Also, it’s not fool proof, but also host everything in Docker containers while only mounting specific volumes you definitely need. Each docker container is like its own little VM and is generally sandboxed from the rest of your system. (This is not 100% accurate, but it’s just another layer of stop gap, and it makes managing self hosted apps much much easier once you learn it.) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- zfa · 2023-11-27 03:12 At least on Linux you just include the bind address and port on the cmdline, e.g: ./filebrowser -a 127.0.0.1 -p 8008 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- austozi · 2023-11-27 05:55 > In theory my planned usage of Filebrowser shouldn't leave me open to any attacks, as long as I keep it updated. How can you be so sure? I hate to say this but this might be what they call blissful ignorance. Complacency is the biggest security threat because it comes from inside your network and the person (you) perpetrating it has full control over the network. I would suggest closing the port and do your research first. You shouldn't rely on FileBrowser's own authentication page alone for security. There should be multiple layers of security measure (e.g. mfa) so if an attacker breaches one, they are stopped by another. You also need some way of detecting malicious attempts before an actual breach actually happens (e.g. fail2ban). If you don't have these layers, you're already at a greater risk than you think. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mocha-0 · 2023-11-28 19:59 Thanks for your comment. Is the cmdline you put that in the one on the browser interface, because when I put that command in it says "Command not allowed" ---------------------------------------------------------------------- zfa · 2023-11-28 20:12 No, that's just the command you use to start filebrowser. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Mocha-0 · 2023-11-29 18:12 Ah, that makes sense now that you point it out. I managed to get it to work through a batch file so It works for me now so thank you :)