Semi-Hemi-Demigod

I’ve been looking for something like this for a while. Calibre is great for managing it on a personal machine, but I want something that I can use on the web and then, with a click, send a book to a Kindle or whatever.

Pausing Gluetun might do that, or it might route the Torrent traffic over the regular network, in which case you might see a blip in the download rate before it goes up again.

Personally I prefere this docker-ized torrent client, since it’s got the VPN built right in, and I don’t need a VPN to do anything other than torrents.

Also from that site: “Configure your domain name details to point to your home, either with a static ip or a service like DuckDNS or Amazon Route53” - I assume this is what Cloudflare is for instead of Duck or Amazon? I also assume it means "tell Cloudflare to take traffic on port 80 and 443 and send it to NGINX’s 80 and 443 as per the previous bullet) - but how?

Yes, this is configuring Cloudflare’s DNS to point to your home IP address. You shouldn’t need to tell it which port, because that’s on a different layer.

First of all, is that all correct or have I misunderstood something?

There’s a couple things you’ve got a bit wrong:

I think I’m correct in saying that mysubdomain.mydomain.com is actually an IP address and a public port, so something like 123.456.7.8:443, then Cloudflare - which is the reverse proxy - gets involved (somehow? how?) to say “ah, 123.456.7.8:443, you obviously want to go to funkless.raspberry.pi:NGINX (or rather something like 987.654.3.2:443)” and then NGINX - which is the proxy-proxy, not a reverse-proxy - goes (somehow? how?) “ah, 987.654.3.2:443, you obviously want to go to 987.654.3.2:8096 which is jellyfin”)

I’m not sure what Cloudflare product you’re using, but I use it as a DNS server for my domain. If you’re doing the same thing - you’ll have configured A records and such if so - then what’s happening is this:

1. You request subdomain.mydomain.com. Your device needs the IP to connect to, so it asks Cloudflare for the IP address. Think of this like calling information to find a phone number.
2. Then your device initiates a request to the IP address it gets back. This is where TLS gets used, and encrypts your connection to that IP address. It also includes the domain requested in a header for the request.
3. Nginx (which is a reverse proxy, meaning it handles incoming rather than outgoing connections) receives the connection and looks at the domain header. Then it looks in its configuration for the IP and port it should connect to, and forwards the request

However, if you’re using some other thing at Cloudflare to make a VPN this might be entirely wrong.

How does mysubdomain.mydomain.com know it’s me and not some random or bot?

Unless you’ve implemented some kind of filtering or authentication in Nginx, it doesn’t. I got around this by configuring HAProxy - which is like Nginx - to only allow requests from my local network except for specific domains that I want to be public.

Is this step “port forwarding” or “opening ports” or “exposing ports” or either or both? (I don’t understand these terms)

Exposing or opening ports is something you do with a firewall. The purpose of Nginx is to make it so you only have to open 1-2 ports, and Nginx will handle redirecting traffic based on its configuration.

If my browser when accessing mysubdomain.mydomain.com is always going to port 80/443, does it need to be told it’s going to talk to cloudflare - if so how? - and does cloudflare need to be told it’s going to talk to NGINX on my local machine - if so how?

If you’re using Cloudflare like I described above, you will only need to tell Cloudflare the public IP address of your Nginx server. Generally you do this by telling your domain registrar (where you buy domain.com) to use Cloudflare’s “nameservers” and then configure Cloudflare to point to your public IP address.

How do I tell NGINX to switch from local:443 to local:8096 (assuming I’ve understood this correctly)

You edit the Nginx config to add something like this:

server {
    server_name subdomain1.example.com;
    location / {
        proxy_pass       http://hostname1:port1;
    }
 }

Then, when Nginx receives a connection request for subdomain1.example.com for any location, it will proxy it to the configured hostname (or IP address) and port.

Is there a difference between an SSL cert and a public and private key - are they three things, two things or one thing?

There are two parts to an SSL cert: A public key and a private key. How SSL works is… complicated, but suffice to say the public key is shared with the connection, and the private key is hidden on the server. You can encrypt data with either one, and only the matching key can decrypt it. This allows both sides to trust the connection and for nobody else to see the data.

Doesn’t a VPN add an extra step of fuckery to this and how do I tell the VPN to allow all this traffic switching without blocking it and without showing the world what I’m doing?

The Internet is like an ogre: It has layers. HTTP and DNS are on one layer, VPNs are a different layer. HTTP and DNS traffic can travel over the Internet, or your local network or over the VPN.

If you’re just setting up a local Jellyfin server, you technically don’t need Cloudflare. Your home router will probably let you hard-code a DNS entry for a local IP address, which will keep all of that traffic on your local network. And if you do that right you won’t even need SSL.

Gluetun just looks like a text document to me (compose.yml) - how do I know it’s actually protecting me?

I’m not familiar with how Gluetun works, but it’s not just compose.yml. When you start it with docker-compose run it will download and extract the code to run Gluetun, and configure networking and other things.

1. I don’t run any of my containers as root
2. Dockerfiles aren’t hard to read so you can pretty easily figure out what they’re doing
3. I find managing dependencies for non-containerized services to be worse than one messy docker directory I never look at

Plus having all my services in a couple docker-compose files also means I can move them around incredibly easily.

Adding a managed services option for NextCloud would be smart. Individual instances that don’t share anything, managed by NextCloud and deployable on multiple cloud infrastructures.

I looked into SearX but didn’t need all the extra features it has

Yep, it just needs outbound connectivity. I run mine on an intranet like you, with VPN access for when I’m not at home.

Correct. And it’s such a tiny, simple Docker install you could theoretically run it locally instead of a server.

One of my favorites is Whoogle, a simple Google search proxy. It accepts search requests and forwards them to Google anonymously, then strips out the AMP links and tracking. There’s even an option for it to use Tor so your IP address changes frequently.

Plus it’s got a built-in UPS

I only have one that’s hooked up to my 3D printer for Octoprint. I’d like to set up another one as a SDR, but I leave my app hosting to more powerful machines.

The only docker containers I run on my router are a simple search proxy and an Infrared instance that routes Minecraft server connections to another box on my LAN. But IIRC that took a bunch of fiddling

I’ve got almost all of my services running on a separate, bigger system and only have a couple ports open on this one. Iptables isn’t too hard once you understand the shorthand.

I have this little guy.

I did mine by just adding some iptables rules to set up NAT. It’s all of four commands:

echo "net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1" >> /etc/sysctl.conf

iptables –t nat -s 192.168.0.0/16 –A POSTROUTING –o $wan0 -j MASQUERADE

iptables –A FORWARD –i $wan0 –o $lan0 –m state --state RELATED, ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT

iptables –A FORWARD –i $lan0 –o $wan0 –j ACCEPT

Just set $lan0 and $wan0 to your LAN and WAN interfaces. For wifi I’ve got a couple Unifi access points around the house for good coverage.

Yes, I know IPv6 is better and yadda yadda yadda but I can’t remember the addresses let alone type them so I’m not changing anything.

I bought a mini pc with four Ethernet ports and turned that into a router

I lived in a hundred-year-old row home and I feel your pain. I had to rent a hammer drill to run Ethernet to my office, which was draped along the outside of my house.