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VPN and server on same machine? (VPN makes server inaccessible to public) (kbin.social)

submitted 10 months ago by FarraigePlaisteach@kbin.social to c/linux@kbin.social

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I run a web server (lighttpd) to serve a few pages to the world. I've installed the nordvpn client and when I run it two expected things happen:

I lose my SSH connection to the machine, and
My website becomes inaccessible to the public

Is it possible to run the VPN and still maintain the SSH connection on the local net and the web server connection on the internet?

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[–] Bldck 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Are you using services running on the OS, Docker or VMs?

With Docker you can set the Network and have some containers traffic egress on the vpn while others have no WAN or direct access. You can have a container join multiple networks to have the best of both worlds.

With VMs, you can set the network interface

With the OS, you might be able to set network interface for each service, but I don’t know how

[–] FarraigePlaisteach@kbin.social 1 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Thanks, I didn't know about any of this before. I'm running services on the OS (Raspbian, on a Raspberry Pi 3B+).

Should I be looking into running the web server or the VPN from docker to get access to these features?

[–] Bldck 1 points 10 months ago

I would recommend using some containerization process like Docker or Podman.

That way the state of each service is independent of each other and the dependencies don’t change.

For example, if one service needs python2 but another needs python3 you don’t have to manage that. The docker build file manages that for you