72
Setting up your own VPN (lemmy.fmhy.ml)
submitted 2 years ago by Coldus12@lemmy.fmhy.ml to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
63 comments fedilink hide all child comments

What do you guys use / recommend to set up your own VPN to access your LAN services remotely?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[-] appel@whiskers.bim.boats 5 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

You can run tailscale client on the host, not in a container. Then for the domain names, create a DNS record either in the public DNS (or I think you can do it in the internal tailscale DNS) that points a wildcard for your subdomains (*.domain.com) to the IP of the container host within the tailnet. Do "tailscale --status" on any device joined to the tailnet to see the IP addresses inside the tailnet. Then all of the devices will make their DNS request to either your upstream DNS or the internal one, they get the response back that they need to send their http request to the container host within the tailnet, it sends on the default 80 or 443 ports for http and https respectively, and then your reverse proxy handles the rest.

[-] goodhunter@lemm.ee 1 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

hi, i finally found some time to dig into this. Oddly, I think I got a functioning setup, although it did a bit differently in the end. If you may, please advise if I indeed reached completion, or I have it set suboptimal.

  1. I installed Tailscale gui natively on my mac mini, and ios devices.
  2. I tried following up on your advise of creating DNS records. First in Cloudflare, but since I already set a wildcard entry as type CNAME/*/mydomain.com/DNSonly/TTLauto I wasn't allowed to add type A record with a similar wildcard entry. I need this existing CNAME line for Traefik to work my SSL certificates (as far i understood). Then I tried setting it up through the DNS>custom Namespaces within Tailscale admin console instead. An entry would look like service.mydomain.com and for ipv4 the local ip of the mac mini. But I wasn't sure about the config as it wasn't working. Then i tried the Tailscale ip 100.xx.xx.xx, to no avail.
  3. I thought I needed to advertise routes for my local network, so I did. As similar to --advertise-routes=192.168.68.0/24. And later instead the docker network 172.23.0.0/16. Still didn't do it.
  4. As I am a NextDNS user I set the ID number in Tailscale>DNS>Nameservers as the Global nameserver and checked Override local DNS.
  5. In the NextDNS config I defined a Rewrite function as *.mydomain.com to the Tailscale IP of the local machine 100.xx.xx.xx . And boom, I can access the servers from my idevices over the Tailscale vpn tunnel.
  6. I then tried to tear down the setup again. It seems the advertise routes from (3) doesn't do anything, so I removed it again.

Open for any suggestions on this hacked attempt.

Update: yes found an issue. I can only access the services with tailscale enabled. I suspect the rewrite is causing an inproper pass through without the tunnel, as that the tailscale ip cannot be reached.

Update 2: I changed to rewrite to the local ip address instead, similar to 192.168.68.110. I think it works now when accessing within the local network without tunnel and externally with the tunnel.

[-] appel@whiskers.bim.boats 1 points 2 years ago

Seems like you got it to work, I'm not sure about traefik requiring that cname for ssl, our setup does not. But yes the way we've done it does require that tailscale is always enabled. Even when on lan. If you've managed to setup both LAN and tailscale connections for one thing that's pretty cool.

this post was submitted on 19 Jul 2023
72 points (98.6% liked)

Selfhosted

60366 readers
712 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

Detailed Rules Post

  1. Be civil.

  2. No spam.

  3. Posts are to be related to self-hosting.

  4. Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or readme if you're providing a link.

  5. Submission headline should match the article title.

  6. No trolling.

  7. Promotion posts require active participation, with an account that is at least 30 days old. F/LOSS without a paywall has exceptions, with requirements. See the rules link for details.

Resources:

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
ruud@lemmy.world
Loki@lemmy.world
CannaVet@lemmy.world
devve@lemmy.world
ayyy@sh.itjust.works
curbstickle@anarchist.nexus
curbstickle_lw@lemmy.world