Route domain name to Docker containers on Synology NAS? (lemmy.world)

submitted 11 months ago by schmurnan@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

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I'm sure I'm massively overthinking this, but any help would be greatly appreciated.

I have a domain name that I bought through NameCheap and I've pointed it to Cloudflare (i.e. updated the name servers). I have a Synology NAS on which I run Docker and a few containers. Up until now I've done this using IP addresses and ports to access everything (I have a Homepage container running and just link to everything from there).

But I want to setup SSL and start running Vaultwarden, hence purchasing a domain name to make it all easier.

I tried creating an A record in Cloudflare to point to the internal IP of my NAS (and obviously, this couldn't be orange-clouded through CF because it's internal to my LAN). I'm very reluctant to point the A record to the external IP of my NAS (which, for added headache is dynamic, so I'd need to get some kind of DDNS) because I don't want to expose everything on my NAS to the Internet. In actual fact, I'm not precious about accessing any of this stuff over the internet - if I need remote access I have a Tailscale container running that I can connect to (more on that later in the post). The domain name was purely for ease of setting up SSL and Vaultwarden.

So I guess my questions are:

What is the best way to go about this - do I create a DDNS on the NAS and point that external IP address to my domain in Cloudflare, then use Traefik to just expose the containers I want to have access to using subdomains?
If so, then how do I know that all other ports aren't accessible (I assume because I'm only going to expose ports 80 and 443 in Traefik?)
What do other people see (i.e. outside my network) if they go to my domain? How do I ensure they can't access my NAS and see some kind of page?
Is there a benefit to using Cloudflare?
How would Pi-hole and local DNS fit into this? I guess I could point my router at Pi-hole for DNS and create my A records on Pi-hole for all my subdomains - but what do I need to setup initially in Cloudflare?
I also have a RPi that has a (very basic) website on it - how do I setup an A record to have Cloudflare point a sub-domain to the Pi's IP address?
Going back to the Tailscale thing - is it possible to point the domain to the IP address of the Tailscale container, so that the domain is only accessible when I switch on the Tailscale VPN? Is this a good idea/bad idea? Is there a better way to do it?

I'm sure these are all noob-type questions, but for the past 6-7 years I've purely used this internally using IP:port combinations, so never had to worry about domain names and external exposure, etc.

Many thanks in advance!

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[-] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 11 months ago

How would Pi-hole and local DNS fit into this?

Pihole/local DNS would resolve all your queries when on your local network. So you would add the A/CNAME records for your services there with local IPs.

but what do I need to setup initially in Cloudflare?

Nothing if you just want local usage of the domain name, queries never hit cloudflare. But you do want the domain at least added to cloudflare so you can issue SSL certs using letsencrypt and its DNS-01 challenge.

What do other people see (i.e. outside my network) if they go to my domain? How do I ensure they can’t access my NAS and see some kind of page?

If you don't open ports on your firewall they wouldn't have any access. Otherwise if you do open the web ports, they generally go to a reverse proxy running somewhere that routes traffic as needed, so you could choose to display some kind of page or just show nothing.

I also have a RPi that has a (very basic) website on it - how do I setup an A record to have Cloudflare point a sub-domain to the Pi’s IP address?

You would need a reverse proxy running either on the Pi or on the NAS that cloudflare points to, then that proxy takes the subdomain and routes it to the appropriate internal IP/service.

[-] schmurnan@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago

Thanks. There’s definitely stuff in here I want to do, I just need to figure out the order of play and break it down a bit.

As per reply to another comment.

Do I have to port forward 80 and 443 no matter what? Ideally I don’t want to forward anything.

Do I need DDNS in here somewhere, i.e. create a DDNS and link it to my NAS, create an A record in Cloudflare to point my domain to the external IP of the DDNS? Is that how I get into my NAS from the domain without worrying about the IP changing? How do I then prevent anybody accessing the NAS admin on port 5000/5001, as well as anything else except the containers I expose via Traefik?

[-] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 11 months ago

Do I have to port forward 80 and 443 no matter what? Ideally I don’t want to forward anything.

You only need to port forward if you want external access without using a VPN or something like that. Like if you wanted friends to be able to access your server for example.

Do I need DDNS in here somewhere, i.e. create a DDNS and link it to my NAS, create an A record in Cloudflare to point my domain to the external IP of the DDNS?

Yes, but only if you want to port forward and have external access. If you want local access only then you don't need port forwarding, DDNS, or any A records in cloudflare.

How do I then prevent anybody accessing the NAS admin on port 5000/5001, as well as anything else except the containers I expose via Traefik?

Assuming you did port forward 80/443, then the NAS admin wouldn't be exposed since it's on different ports.

[-] schmurnan@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago

Thanks. I realise they’re all pretty basic questions. But brace yourself: more are on their way!

So… no, I don’t want to give external access - I’m not running any services that anyone would want/need access to - other than perhaps my Jellyfin server, but not sure I even want anyone accessing that. So let’s assume for right now, no access to the outside world. Therefore, no port forwarding required.

So to get access to my internal network from the domain, do I simply setup local DNS records in something like Pi-hole, to point mydomain.com to the internal IP or my NAS? Kind of like a network-wide equivalent of modding the /etc/hosts file on my machine?

Perhaps a(nother) silly question but, what’s to stop me doing that now with a completely random domain name? Is there some kind of authentication I’d need to go through to prove that mydomain.com is, in fact, mine? Or does it simply not matter since it’s internal only?

If I’ve understood correctly, then, I don’t need Cloudflare at all in my setup if there’s no external access? Nothing to proxy, nothing to protect?

Assuming I get all of the above working and traffic routing to my containers, how would I then go about setting up SSL? Can that be done through Traefik rather than Cloudflare? Even if the domain isn’t external?

[-] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

do I simply setup local DNS records in something like Pi-hole, to point mydomain.com to the internal IP or my NAS? Kind of like a network-wide equivalent of modding the /etc/hosts file on my machine?

Yep exactly!

Perhaps a(nother) silly question but, what’s to stop me doing that now with a completely random domain name?

Nothing, it's local to your network only so it only affects you. You could set google.com to return whatever IP you want for example, but it would prevent you from actually accessing google.

If I’ve understood correctly, then, I don’t need Cloudflare at all in my setup if there’s no external access? Nothing to proxy, nothing to protect?

The only thing you need Cloudflare (or another DNS-01 supported service) for, is getting letsencrypt SSL certificates. Since it uses automatically generated public DNS records on your domain name to verify that you own it.

Can that be done through Traefik rather than Cloudflare? Even if the domain isn’t external?

Yep it's done through Traefik either way, their docs should have a section on SSL with cloudflare IIRC.

[-] schmurnan@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago

Absolute superstar, thanks for your help so far. I’ll make a start on some of this tomorrow and see how far I get — either with Traefik or NPM.

Do I need to do anything with the domain itself on Cloudflare at the moment? Or do I just leave it with its current A record pointing at an IP address (it was done as part of the setup in Cloudflare so I have no idea what that IP address is).

Obviously that domain in reality will just sit there doing nothing.

[-] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 11 months ago

Yeah you can just leave it, delete the A record if you want to.

[-] schmurnan@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago

OK so made a start with this. Spun up a Pi-hole container, added mydomain.com as an A record in Local DNS, and created a CNAME for traefik.mydomain.com to point to mydomain.com.

In Cloudflare, I removed the mydomain.com A record and the www CNAME record.

Doing an nslookup on mydomain.com I get

Non-authoritative answer:
*** Can't find mydomain.com: No answer

Which I guess is to be expected.

However, when I then navigate to http://traefik.mydomain.com in my browser, I'm met with a Cloudflare error page: https://imgur.com/XhKOywo.

Below is the docker-compose of my traefik container:

traefik:
    container_name: traefik
    image: traefik:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    networks:
      - medianet
    ports:
      - 80:80
      - 443:443
    expose:
      - 8080
    volumes:
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
      - /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro
      - /volume1/docker/traefik:/etc/traefik
      - /volume1/docker/traefik/access.log:/logs/access.log
      - /volume1/docker/traefik/traefik.log:/logs/traefik.log
      - /volume1/docker/traefik/acme/acme.json:/acme.json
    environment:
      - TZ=Europe/London
    labels:
      - traefik.enable=true
      - traefik.http.routers.traefik.rule=Host(`$TRAEFIK_DASHBOARD_HOST`) &amp;&amp; (PathPrefix(`/api`) || PathPrefix(`/dashboard`))
      - traefik.http.routers.traefik.service=api@internal
      - traefik.http.routers.traefik.entrypoints=traefik

My traefik.yml is also nice and basic at this point:

global:
  sendAnonymousUsage: false

entryPoints:
  web:
    address: ":80"
  traefik:
    address: "8080"

api:
  dashboard: true
  insecure: true

providers:
  docker:
    endpoint: "unix:///var/run/docker.sock"
    watch: true
    exposedByDefault: false

log:
  filePath: traefik.log
  level: DEBUG

accessLog:
  filePath: access.log
  bufferingSize: 100

Any ideas what's going wrong? I'm unclear on why the domain is still routing to Cloudflare.

[-] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 11 months ago

It sounds like your client isn't using PiHole for DNS, do you see the DNS lookup come through the pihole logs?

[-] schmurnan@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago

Actually, no I don't see anything coming through.

So the IP address of my router is 192.168.1.1, IP of my NAS is 192.168.1.116.

Checked the DNS on my Mac and it's 192.168.1.1. Checked the DNS on my NAS and it's 192.168.1.1. I changed the DNS in my router to 192.168.1.116.

Have I missed a step somewhere?

[-] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 11 months ago

It sounds like you haven't updated your routers DHCP server to hand out the Pihole IP to clients. You can manually set the DNS server to the Pihole IP on your Mac for testing too.

The flow should be: Clients > Pihole > Router > Public DNS

Or you can skip the router: Clients > Pihole > Public DNS

[-] schmurnan@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I wasn't planning on using Pi-hole for DHCP - I have a LOT of reserved addresses on my network and I don't fancy having to move them all over. My hope had been to use Pi-hole for DNS but keep the DHCP reservation with the router.

I've manually updated the DNS on my Mac to 192.168.1.116 and I can now access the Traefik dashboard via http://traefik.mydomain.com:8080 (so, getting there). So some kind of issue with the DNS on my router I think - caching maybe?

[-] MangoPenguin@lemmy.blahaj.zone 0 points 11 months ago

Yeah that's fine, you just need to change the DHCP settings on your router so it gives the Pihole IP for DNS. It's possible some routers don't allow that though.

[-] schmurnan@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago

Figured it out. It’s a weird setting on Netgear routers whereby you have to also update the MAC address. All been working well for the last few hours and getting queries running through Pi-hole.

I’ve also got my Homepage container setup at http://home.mydomain.com and configured Traefik a little further so it’s now accessible from http://traefik.mydomain.com (no port).

For the past few hours I’ve been struggling with getting Pi-hole behind Traefik and accessible using http://pihole.mydomain.com. Only works if I stick /admin on the end, which defeats the object of using a subdomain. Found a forum post suggesting to use Traefik’s addPrefix after declaring the Host as pihole.mydomain.com, which works great for accessing the login screen, but when you enter the password it just loops back to the login screen.

Also tried a few other things that ultimately broke the Pi-hole container and took out my entire connection, as everything is dependent on Pi-hole for DNS! So need to figure out some kind of resiliency/backup for that (my router is using the NAS IP as it’s primary and only DNS server).

So, some progress. I’ve set Pi-hope back to IP:port and I’m gonna focus on getting other containers behind Traefik and leave Pi-hole till last. Then and only then will I look at SSL certificates (unless it’s advised to do it earlier?)

Any pointers on any of the above would be appreciated! And thanks again for getting me this far.

[-] schmurnan@lemmy.world 0 points 11 months ago

Update from this morning.

So far I've got the Traefik dashboard and my Homepage container using subdomains. Pi-hole is still an issue that I need to figure out.

I've decided to start on the SSL certificates and am following a couple of guides. Once I have those in place, I'll start moving more containers behind subdomains.

I might have to expose my NAS IP to the internet and link it via Cloudflare, because I use an ExpressVPN on my Mac at all times, and when it's turned on I can't access ***any ***of my subdomains - this is obviously because ExpressVPN use their own DNS entries and don't use the ones I've set. That will probably prevent me from using Vaultwarden (which is the whole purpose for all of this in the first place) because if I'm on the VPN I won't be able to access the Vaultwarden container.

Unless anyone knows of a workaround for that?

Next steps:

Get SSL working
Figure out how to access subdomains whilst on the VPN (or get a DDNS account, create an A record in Cloudflare and point it at the DDNS IP, and open up ports 80 and 443)
Spin up a Vaultwarden container via a subdomain
Put all my other services behind subdomains
Figure out how to get Pi-hole working via Traefik and subdomain
Figure out how to get Tailscale access to my containers when not on my LAN

[-] schmurnan@lemmy.world 1 points 11 months ago

Just a quick update on where I'm up to...

I've managed to get all my containers working behind the Traefik reverse proxy with SSL. I've also deployed a Cloudflare DDNS container in Docker and have linked the external IP address of my Synology NAS to Cloudflare. I haven't port forwarded 80 and 443, though, so it's not accessible over the internet. So I've added local DNS into Pi-hole so I can access all the containers using subdomains.

I've also deployed an Authelia container and have started running through my containers adding 2FA in front of them all.

I should probably point out at this juncture, that if I encounter any errors, the HTTP 404 page that I get is a Cloudflare one - I assume that's expected behaviour?

So, the final three bits I'm struggling with now are:

Pi-hole behind the reverse proxy
Portainer behind the reverse proxy
Accessing Vaultwarden over the internet (because as soon as I leave my house, if the vault hasn't synced then I don't have access to all my passwords) - unless anybody has a better suggestion?

Portainer - I have no idea how I do it, because I use it to manage my containers, so don't have the config for Portainer in Portainer (obviously). So if I screw up the config, how am I getting back in to Portainer to fix it?

And the far more troubling one is Pi-hole. I just cannot get that thing working behind the reverse proxy.

I've followed a few different guides (though none of them are recent), and the below is the latest docker-compose I have. It will bring up the login page, but when I login it keeps returning me back to the login page - it won't go to the main admin page.

version: "3.7"

services:
  pihole:
    container_name: pihole
    image: pihole/pihole:latest
    restart: unless-stopped
    networks:
      - medianet
      - npm_network
    ports:
      - 8008:80
      - 53:53/tcp
      - 53:53/udp
    environment:
      - TZ=Europe/London
      - WEBPASSWORD=xxxxxxxxxx
      - FTLCONF_LOCAL_IPV4=192.168.1.116
      - WEBTHEME=default-auto
      - DNSMASQ_LISTENING=ALL
      - VIRTUAL_HOST=pihole.mydomain.com
    volumes:
      - /path/to/pihole:/etc/pihole
      - /path/to/pihole/dnsmasq.d:/etc/dnsmasq.d
    cap_add:
      - NET_ADMIN
    labels:
      - traefik.enable=true
      - traefik.http.routers.pihole.entrypoints=http
      - traefik.http.routers.pihole.rule=Host(`pihole.mydomain.com`)
      - traefik.http.middlewares.pihole-https-redirect.redirectscheme.scheme=https
      - traefik.http.routers.pihole.middlewares=pihole-https-redirect
      - traefik.http.middlewares.pihole-addprefix.addprefix.prefix=/admin
      - traefik.http.routers.pihole.middlewares=pihole-addprefix
      - traefik.http.routers.pihole-secure.entrypoints=https
      - traefik.http.routers.pihole-secure.rule=Host(`pihole.mydomain.com`)
      - traefik.http.routers.pihole-secure.tls=true
      - traefik.http.routers.pihole-secure.service=pihole
      - traefik.http.services.pihole.loadbalancer.server.port=80

networks:
  medianet:
    external: true
  npm_network:
    external: true

this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023

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