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is it better to use subdomains or paths? (lemmy.blahaj.zone)

submitted 1 year ago by Sekoia@lemmy.blahaj.zone to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world

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I have a few selfhosted services, but I'm slowly adding more. Currently, they're all in subdomains like linkding.sekoia.example etc. However, that adds DNS records to fetch and means more setup. Is there some reason I shouldn't put all my services under a single subdomain with paths (using a reverse proxy), like selfhosted.sekoia.example/linkding?

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[–] fbartels@lemmy.one 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You’ll have to use http://192etc:port. So no httpS for internal access

This is not really correct. When you use http this implies that you want to connect to port 80 without encryption, while using https implies that you want to use an ssl connection to port 443.

You can still use https on a different port, Proxmox by default exposes itself on https://proxmox-ip:8006 for example.

Its still better to use (sub)domains as then you don't have to remember strings of numbers.

[–] TemperateFox 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I understand, though if the services you're hosting are all http by themselves, and https due to a reverse proxy, if you attempt to connect to the reverse proxy it'll only serve the root service. I'm not aware of a method of getting to subdomains from the reverse proxy if you try to reach it locally via ip.

[–] macgregor@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Generally a hostname based reverse proxy routes requests based on the host header, which some tools let you set. For example, curl:

curl -H 'Host: my.local.service.com' http://192.168.1.100

here 192.168.1.100 is the LAN IP address of your reverse proxy and my.local.service.com is the service behind the proxy you are trying to reach. This can be helpful for tracking down network routing problems.

If TLS (https) is in the mix and you care about it being fully secure even locally it can get a little tricky depending on whether the route is pass through (application handles certs) or terminate and reencrypt (reverse proxy handles certs). Most commonly you'll run into problems with the client not trusting the server because the "hostname" (the LAN IP address when accessing directly) doesn't match what the certificate says (the DNS name). Lots of ways around that as well, for example adding the service's LAN IP address to the cert's subject alternate names (SAN) which feels wrong but it works.

Personally I just run a little DNS server so I can resolve the various services to their LAN IP addresses and TLS still works properly. You can use your /etc/hosts file for a quick and dirty "DNS server" for your dev machine.

[–] TemperateFox 1 points 1 year ago

Thanks for the info, lot there I didn't know. Yeah after a few years on paths, I also ended up with a local DNS server and using subdomains.