Making a Local Dev Server accessible via Public Domain using Cloudflare Tunnel

Hi all,

Today, we are going to discuss how you can publicly access the local running server with a domain and Cloudflare tunnel.

Pre-requisites

1. Domain
2. DNS on Cloudflare
3. Cloudflare One account access
4. Local server

Set up the environment

Application

Make sure your application runs locally on a port like 8000,9000 etc.

Cloudflare Tunnel

1. Log in to your Cloudflare One account.
2. Go to "Zero Trust".
3. Expand Networks and select Connectors.
4. Click on “Create a tunnel”.
5. Select “Cloudflared”.
6. Give a name to your tunnel.
7. Click on “Save”.
8. In the "Choose your environment" section, select the environment where the server is running.
9. Follow the instructions to install and run a connector.
10. Here, you need to move to your server machine.
11. Open the terminal and perform the instructions to install the "cloudflared" tool.
12. Run using the token (part of the command).
13. Once the installation is completed. Click on Save.

Add IP/CIDR

1. Edit the tunnel to add the IP/CIDR.
2. Choose based on your local DHCP.

Published application routes

1. Click on “Add a published application route”.
2. Give an optional subdomain.
3. Select the domain from the dropdown.
1. You need to have your domain managed by Cloudflare (DNS).
4. An optional path to make sure you have a frontend and a backend that work together.
5. Under service, select Type as HTTP, and your local machine server port.
6. Select the URL of the server application, including the localport.
1. localhost:9000
7. Click on “Save”.

Note: If you have a frontend and a backend, then you need to add one more application route.

In my scenario, the frontend path is * with localhost:9001, and the backend path is api/* with localhost:8000.

Run the tunnel

1. Make sure your local web server is running
2. Log in to cloudflared

• cloudflared tunnel login

• Authorize the tunnel on the web browser post login
3. List the tunnels

• cloudflared tunnel list

4. Get the tunnel token from the tunnel you created in Cloudflare connectors
5. Run the command on the local terminal

• cloudflared tunnel run --token eyJhIjoiM2...

6. Now, you should be able to browse your configured subdomain with your local web server content. 

Troubleshooted issue

If the frontend with path "/*" is above the backend route, then your backend APIs will never be reached.

So, "move up" the backend with "/api/*" path above the frontend to serve the requests.

Feel free to reach out to me if you have any doubts and clarifications needed at my email psrdotcom@gmail.com

Migrate from Nginx to Caddy for SSL auto-renewal in Amazon AWS EC2

 Dear friends,

Today, we will see a simple migration with less configuration of SSL auto-renewal.

I was using Nginx for SSL auto-renewal using certbot. Every 90 days, the renewal code should run, I made one more service it.

I have come across Caddy, which does an auto-renewal of SSL automatically with certbot. Reducing efforts and making the system smooth.

Follow the steps below

Stop and disable the Nginx

sudo systemctl stop nginx

sudo systemctl disable nginx

Install the Caddy

In EC2, if you are running Amazon Linux, then execute the following to install Caddy.

    sudo yum -y install yum-plugin-copr

    sudo yum -y copr enable @caddy/caddy epel-8-$(arch)

    sudo yum -y install caddy

Edit and configure the Caddyfile

Usually, it will be in the path /etc/caddy/Caddyfile

sudo vi /etc/caddy/Caddyfile

I have only one server that is running locally. So, my configuration is easy

domain_name {

    reverse_proxy localhost:port

}

You can configure more with your existing Nginx sites-enabled reference.

Happy SSLing.

If you like the blog or want to comment, kindly reach out to psrdotcom@gmail.com