I have a few selfhosted services, but I’m slowly adding more. Currently, they’re all in subdomains like linkding.sekoia.example etc. However, that adds DNS records to fetch and means more setup. Is there some reason I shouldn’t put all my services under a single subdomain with paths (using a reverse proxy), like selfhosted.sekoia.example/linkding?
I prefer subdomains, personally. A lot of services expect to run on the root of the web server, so although you can sometimes configure them to use a path, it’s kind of a pain.
Also, migrating services from one server to another will be a lot easier with subdomains since all you have to do is change the A and AAAA records. I use ZeroTier for a lot of my services, and that’s really nice since, even if I move a container to another machine, the container’s ZeroTier IP address will stay the same, so I don’t even need to update DNS. With paths, migration would involve a lot more work.
The only problem with using paths is the service might not support it (ie it might generate absolute URLs without the path in, rather than using relative URLs).
Subdomains is probably the cleanest way to go.
Agreed, I’ve run into lots of problems trying to get reverse proxies set up on paths, which disappear if you use a subdomain. For that reason I stick with subdomains and a wildcard DNS entry.
Lemmy is a perfect example!
Try not to use paths, you’ll have some weird cross-interactions when two pieces of software set the same cookie (session cookies for example), which will make you reauthenticate for every path.
Subdomains are the way to go, especially with wildcard DNS entries and DNS-01 letsencrypt challenges.
I’ve kinda been trimming the amount of services I’ve exposed through subdomains, it grew so wild because it was pretty easy. I’d just set a wildcard subdomains to my ip and the caddy reverse proxy created the subdomains.
Just have a wildcard A record that points *. to your ip address.
Even works with nested domains like “home.” and then “*.home”
Oh, that’s a good idea, thanks!
You can make a wildcard domain and point it to the reverse proxy to route based on SNI. That works if you have HTTPS sites only. Just an idea.
in addition to all other good comments - if you will ever decide to move out service to another server or something like that - moving subdomains will be much easier.
I use traefik with subdomains and everywhere I go I see people use subdomains, not sure
Depends on the usage and also service. I’m using subfolders for all my Tasmota switches. Like https://switch.domain.org/garage this makes it easier to maintain because I don’t need to mess around with a new subdomain for ever new device. On the other side, I like unique services on a subfomain: video or audio. I can switch the application behind, but the entry point remains.
Everyone is saying subdomains so I’ll try to give a reason for paths. Using subdomains makes local access a bit harder. With paths you can use httpS://192etc/example, but if you use subdomains, how do you connect internally with https? Https://example.192etc won’t work as you can’t mix an ip address with domain resolution. You’ll have to use http://192etc:port. So no httpS for internal access. I got around this by hosting adguard as a local DNS and added an override so that my domain resolved to the local IP. But this won’t work if you’re connected to a VPN as it’ll capture your DNS requests, if you use paths you could exclude the IP from the VPN.
Edit: not sure what you mean by “more setup”, you should be using a reverse proxy either way.
You’ll have to use http://192etc:port. So no httpS for internal access
This is not really correct. When you use
httpthis implies that you want to connect to port 80 without encryption, while usinghttpsimplies that you want to use an ssl connection to port 443.You can still use https on a different port, Proxmox by default exposes itself on
https://proxmox-ip:8006for example.Its still better to use (sub)domains as then you don’t have to remember strings of numbers.
I understand, though if the services you’re hosting are all http by themselves, and https due to a reverse proxy, if you attempt to connect to the reverse proxy it’ll only serve the root service. I’m not aware of a method of getting to subdomains from the reverse proxy if you try to reach it locally via ip.
Generally a hostname based reverse proxy routes requests based on the host header, which some tools let you set. For example, curl:
curl -H 'Host: my.local.service.com' http://192.168.1.100here 192.168.1.100 is the LAN IP address of your reverse proxy and my.local.service.com is the service behind the proxy you are trying to reach. This can be helpful for tracking down network routing problems.
If TLS (https) is in the mix and you care about it being fully secure even locally it can get a little tricky depending on whether the route is pass through (application handles certs) or terminate and reencrypt (reverse proxy handles certs). Most commonly you’ll run into problems with the client not trusting the server because the “hostname” (the LAN IP address when accessing directly) doesn’t match what the certificate says (the DNS name). Lots of ways around that as well, for example adding the service’s LAN IP address to the cert’s subject alternate names (SAN) which feels wrong but it works.
Personally I just run a little DNS server so I can resolve the various services to their LAN IP addresses and TLS still works properly. You can use your /etc/hosts file for a quick and dirty “DNS server” for your dev machine.
Thanks for the info, lot there I didn’t know. Yeah after a few years on paths, I also ended up with a local DNS server and using subdomains.
Edit: not sure what you mean by “more setup”, you should be using a reverse proxy either way.
I’m using cloudflare tunnels (because I don’t have a static IP and I’m behind a NAS, so I would need to port forward and stuff, which is annoying). For me specifically, that means I have to do a bit of admin on the cloudflare dashboard for every subdomain, whereas with paths I can just config the reverse proxy.
Ahh I see, I’m using cloudflared tunnels too, if you’re ok with exposing all the services, you can use a wildcard entry in the dashboard.
If your router has NAT reflection, then the problem you describe is non existent. I use the same domain/protocol both inside and outside my network.
Does NAT reflection still work if your PC is connected to a VPN?
I don’t know for sure… but my instinct is that NAT reflection is moot in that case, because your connection is going out past the edge router and doing the DNS query there, which will then direct you back to your public IP. I’m sure there’s somebody around that knows the answer for certain!
I got around this by hosting adguard as a local DNS and added an override so that my domain resolved to the local IP. But this won’t work if you’re connected to a VPN as it’ll capture your DNS requests
Why didn’t you use your hosts file?
That would also work, though I also wanted other devices like my mobile and tv to work the same way while at home. With mobile, setting DNS for the Wi-Fi network means it’ll access local while at home and via cloudflared while roaming, without having to log out and in on apps to change the server address.
@Sekoia I like using subdomains as it is easy to configure in a lot of services. Also, easier to remember if you are giving the URL to someone for access.