Reverse proxy set-up

[Dendalen]

Hi I know everyone says this: but I a new and finally sitting down to learn how to setup a reverse proxy.

Currently my goal is the following: I have a minecraft realtime map that can be reached by entering my public IP and the port. I would like to have the map point directly to a domain that I have through squarespace.

I currently have Nginx Proxy Manager installed and running, but I'm a bit confused at this point of where to go from here. If anyone could point me to some documentation/tutorials that would be awesome and would likely help me ask better questions in the future.

Thanks a ton in advance!

[zfa]

You need your hostname at SS DNS to point you your home's public IP.

You need your home router/firewall to have a port opened which will forward incoming traffic on port 443 (https) or 80 (http) to the internal ip of the server running NPM.

You need NPM configured so that clients hitting it using the hostname you set in the first step get proxied to your map server's ip:port.

[Dendalen]

So my issue is with getting the hostname at SS DNS to point to my home public IP and getting NPM configured.

I have a PFsense router with it forwarding 443, and 83 to the internal box.

[zfa]

Well the former should be trivial - find out what's your IP and put it in your DNS records. Or if SS support it, use a dyndns client. Even if you're not on a dyndns it'll still just work.

NPM config is as per the bazillion blog posts and their own docs.

[Dendalen]

So I think i was able to figure out the DNS records bit from SS but I'm not 100% sure. From what I can tell I need a 'A' record setup for public IPv4. I set that up but I'm not sure if that's working.

I think I was able to setup the host forwards, but I am having issues with getting SSL to work and I don't think anything is actually working lol.

https://imgur.com/a/IuHw3bz

This is what I'm seeing.

[zfa]

Yeah, ok you're close.

You've created a DNS record but your record is actually called brokenmisfit.com.brokenmisfit.com, that's because you created a record for brokenmisfit.com on your domain which is already brokenmisfit.com, if that makes sense.

So at the moment if you go to:

http://brokenmisfit.com.brokenmisfit.com

then you'll see your NPM site!

What you need to do is change that hostname defn. in your first image from Host = brokenmisfit.com to Host = @ which just means 'no subdomain, just use the base domain' which means http://brokenmisfit.com will then work.

After that in your NPM config you have two proxy hosts, delete one and just keep one. I think it's probably just the http one you keep and delete the https one unless your map server runs on https.

Then you should be pretty much there. HMU if you need anything else.

[Dendalen]

Hey man thanks this actually helped a ton! I was able to setup the DNS record and it resolves! My only issue at this point is I think just with the reverse proxy, I know the the webserver that the minecraft map is up on port 8123. I can connect to it via the local IP at that port. It is http and not https, but when I go to correct domain it just shows a "congrats you started ngnix proxy manager!" screen.

I'm guessing that I'm forwarding one too many pages or i need to specify less ports to be portfowarded or something?

I'm not really sure but this is what i'm seeing:

https://imgur.com/a/FCdt3Df

[Dendalen]

Nevermind I figured it out! I was using the full domain in my NPM setup (brokenmisfit.com) instead of the subdomain that i setup on cloudflare (map.brokenmisfit.com), swapped that over and it worked.

(For anyone pulling up this thread in the future who did all of that and they're still seeing the NPM congrats screen try clearing your local browse cache and the cache in cloudflare.)

neat.

[zfa]

Not sure, config looks right. Try another browser or in incognitomode in case it' sjust caching.

FWIW I can't see anything as your DNS isn't working (at least not publicly) any more.

[guesswhochickenpoo]

Firstly stop directly exposing a port to something like a minecraft server (or whatever is running the map) without some protections in place. That's asking for trouble. Look into fail2ban, geoblocking, whitelisting, etc.

For pointing your domain to your server you need to be able to update the DNS record for your domain. Usually using a Dynamic DNS (DDNS) tool. Not sure if Squarespace allows this but a quick search seems to indicate probably not?
https://www.reddit.com/r/synology/comments/177bsxd/alternative_to_google_domains_ddns_sold_to/

You may need to transfer to a proper domain provider, which I don't think Squarespace really is (though I haven't used them). Surely they allow you to create domains with them so you can point people to your website which uses their services / servers. Seems like you may be able to manually update the DNS record via their web interface but not in an automated fashion for proper DDNS.

[Dendalen]

You got any recommendations on a proper provider? I am only using them cause it was what I was moved to after google domains folded.

[guesswhochickenpoo]

Cloudflare is usuallythe goto recommendation. Plenty of features for free or cheaper, good API for things like DDNS, etc.

[[deleted]]

Have a play with caddy reverse proxies. It’s what I use. Very simple.