Interested in getting involved with world changing open source software? Check out the next (WIP) iteration of this project: https://github.com/fractalnetworksco/fractal-link

Jump to Getting Started

• Docker native self-hosted alternative to Cloudflare Tunnels, Tailscale Funnel, ngrok and others.
• Entirely self-hosted and self-managed, includes local and remote tunneling components.
• No custom code, this project leverages existing battled tested FOSS components:
  • WireGuard
  • Nginx (Gateway)
  • Caddy (Client)
• Automatic client side HTTPS cert provisioning thanks to Caddy's automatic https.
• Remote client IPs passed to local container via proxy protocol
• Enable basic authentication by specifying env variable containing username and password
• Proxy generic TCP/UDP traffic to localhost with socat

This project automates the provisioning of Reverse Proxy-over-VPN (RPoVPN) WireGuard tunnels with Caddy and NGINX. It is particularly well suited for exposing docker compose services defined in a docker-compose file to the public Internet. There's no code or APIs, just an ultra generic NGINX config and some short provisioning bash script. TLS certs are provisioned automatically with Caddy's Automatic HTTPS feature via Let's Encrypt or ZeroSSL.

1. RPoVPN is a common strategy for remotely accessing applications self-hosted at home. It solves problems such as:

• Self-hosting behind double-NAT or via an ISP that does CGNAT (Starlink, Mobile Internet).
• Inability to portforward on your local network due to insufficient access.
• Having a dynamically allocated IP that may change frequently.

2. Using RPoVPN is ideal for self-hosting from both a network security and privacy perspective:

• Obviates the need for a static IP or expose your home's public IP address to the world.
• Utilizes advanced network isolation capabilities of Docker (thanks to Linux network namespaces) in order to isolate locally exposed services from your home network and other local docker services.
• Built on open-source technologies (WireGuard, Caddy and NGINX).

• Domain
  • Ability to create an A record for a domain name.
• Gateway
  • A publicly addressable Linux host to act as the gateway, typically a cloud VPS (Hetzner, Digital Ocean, etc..) with the following requirements:
  • SSH access
  • Ports 80/443 open (http/https)
  • The UDP port range listed by cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_local_port_range open to the Internet.
  • docker, git & make installed on the Gateway
• Client
  • An existing docker-compose.yml that you would like to expose to the Internet.
  • docker, git & make installed locally

1. Point *.mydomain.com (DNS A Record) to the IPv4 & IPv6 address of your VPS Gateway host.

2. Connect to the gateway via SSH and setup the gateway service:

foo@gateway:~$ git clone ... && cd selfhosted-gateway
foo@gateway:~/selfhosted-gateway$ make docker
foo@gateway:~/selfhosted-gateway$ make setup
foo@gateway:~/selfhosted-gateway$ make gateway

3. To generate a link docker compose snippet run the following commands from the client:

foo@local:~$ git clone ... && cd selfhosted-gateway
foo@local:~/selfhosted-gateway$ make docker
foo@local:~/selfhosted-gateway$ make link GATEWAY=root@123.456.789.101 FQDN=nginx.mydomain.com EXPOSE=nginx:80
# docker compose --env-file ./nginx-mydomain-com.env ...
  link:
    image: fractalnetworks/gateway-client:latest
    environment:
      LINK_DOMAIN: nginx.mydomain.com
      EXPOSE: nginx:80
      GATEWAY_CLIENT_WG_PRIVKEY: 4M7Ap0euzTxq7gTA/WIYIt3nU+i2FvHUc9eYTFQ2CGI=
      GATEWAY_LINK_WG_PUBKEY: Wipd6Pv7ttmII4/Oj82I5tmGZwuw6ucsE3G+hwsMR08=
      GATEWAY_ENDPOINT: 123.456.789.101:49185
    cap_add:
      - NET_ADMIN

The command will also generate a .env file in your current directory:

foo@local:~/selfhosted-gateway$ cat ./nginx-mydomain-com.env
EXPOSE=nginx:80
GATEWAY_ENDPOINT=123.456.789.101:49185
GATEWAY_LINK_WG_PUBKEY=Wipd6Pv7ttmII4/Oj82I5tmGZwuw6ucsE3G+hwsMR08=
LINK_DOMAIN=nginx.mydomain.com
WG_PRIVKEY=4M7Ap0euzTxq7gTA/WIYIt3nU+i2FvHUc9eYTFQ2CGI=

4. Add the link service to your existing docker-compose.yml file:

• by copy-pasting the output from the previous command:

  version: '3.9'
  services:
    nginx:
      image: nginx:latest
    link:
      image: fractalnetworks/gateway-client:latest
      environment:
        LINK_DOMAIN: nginx.mydomain.com
        EXPOSE: nginx:80
        GATEWAY_CLIENT_WG_PRIVKEY: 4M7Ap0euzTxq7gTA/WIYIt3nU+i2FvHUc9eYTFQ2CGI=
        GATEWAY_LINK_WG_PUBKEY: Wipd6Pv7ttmII4/Oj82I5tmGZwuw6ucsE3G+hwsMR08=
        GATEWAY_ENDPOINT: 123.456.789.101:49185
      cap_add:
        - NET_ADMIN

• or by inserting the template snippet from src/create-link/link-compose-snippet.yml.
  In this case, you will need to specify the .env file to use when running docker-compose commands:

  foo@local:~/selfhosted-gateway$ docker compose --env-file ./nginx-mydomain-com.env up -d

  See Docker Compose documentation "Substitute environment variables with an .env file" for more information.

5. Start your docker compose project as you would normally (docker compose up -d).

This will establish the link to the gateway and automatically provision a TLS-certificate.
You may repeat steps 3-5 for as many services as you would like to expose using the same gateway

├── ...
└── src
    ├── client-link  # WireGuard instance for the client. Also handles SSL termination with Caddy
    │   └── ...
    ├── create-link  # CLI script for establishing a link.
    │   └── ...
    ├── gateway      # NGINX reverse proxy to distribute requests to each gateway-link instance.
    │   └── ...
    └── gateway-link # WireGuard instance for the gateway.
        └── ...

• Link - A dedicated WireGuard tunnel between a local container (client) and the remote container running on the Gateway through which Reverse Proxy traffic is routed. A link is comprised of 2 pieces, the local or client link and the gateway or remote link.

In the event you already have a reverse proxy which performs SSL termination for your apps/services you can enable FORWARD_ONLY mode. Suppose you are using Traefik for SSL termination:

1. On your local LAN you will resolve *.sub.mydomain.com to your local Traefik IP
2. On your external DNS for your domain you will resolve *.sub.mydomain.com to the IP of your VPS
3. In your compose file add an additional two variables: EXPOSE_HTTPS and FORWARD_ONLY

version: '3.9'
services:
  app:
    image: traefik:latest
  link:
    image: fractalnetworks/gateway-client:latest
    environment:
      LINK_DOMAIN: sub.mydomain.com
      EXPOSE: app:80
      EXPOSE_HTTPS: app:443
      FORWARD_ONLY: "True"
      GATEWAY_CLIENT_WG_PRIVKEY: 4M7Ap0euzTxq7gTA/WIYIt3nU+i2FvHUc9eYTFQ2CGI=
      GATEWAY_LINK_WG_PUBKEY: Wipd6Pv7ttmII4/Oj82I5tmGZwuw6ucsE3G+hwsMR08=
      GATEWAY_ENDPOINT: 5.161.127.102:49185
    cap_add:
      - NET_ADMIN

You will see logs from the link container indicating it is in forward only mode:

traefikv2_link.1.qvijxtwiu0wb@docker01    | + socat TCP4-LISTEN:8443,fork,reuseaddr TCP4:app:443,reuseaddr
traefikv2_link.1.qvijxtwiu0wb@docker01    | + socat TCP4-LISTEN:8080,fork,reuseaddr TCP4:app:80,reuseaddr

If the backend container already has a TLS certification, the connection between Caddy and the backend container can be switched to TLS/HTTPS with the CADDY_TLS_PROXY parameter. In case the certificate is self-signed, the addition CADDY_TLS_INSECURE can be used to deactivate the certificate check.

This will continue to create a certificate for the backend via Let's Encrypt.

version: '3.9'
services:
  app:
    image: traefik:latest
  link:
    image: fractalnetworks/gateway-client:latest
    environment:
      LINK_DOMAIN: sub.mydomain.com
      EXPOSE:  https://app:80
      CADDY_TLS_PROXY: true
      # Optional
      # CADDY_TLS_INSECURE: true
      GATEWAY_CLIENT_WG_PRIVKEY: 4M7Ap0euzTxq7gTA/WIYIt3nU+i2FvHUc9eYTFQ2CGI=
      GATEWAY_LINK_WG_PUBKEY: Wipd6Pv7ttmII4/Oj82I5tmGZwuw6ucsE3G+hwsMR08=
      GATEWAY_ENDPOINT: 5.161.127.102:49185
    cap_add:
      - NET_ADMIN

$ docker ps

• How is this better than setting up nginx and WireGuard myself on a VPS?

The goal of this project is to make self-hosting more accessible and reproducible. This project leverages a "ZeroTrust" network architecture. Each "Link" provides a dedicated WireGuard tunnel that is isolated from other containers and the underlying host. This isolation is provided by Docker Compose's creation of a private Docker network for each compose project.

• Can I still access the service from my local network?

Yes, just expose ports in your Docker host as you would normally:

ports:
 - 80:80
 - 443:443

Community support is available via our Matrix Channel https://matrix.to/#/#fractal:ether.ai