Traefik reverse proxy

A Traefik Docker configuration that acts as the entrypoint for my development environment.

Setup

The setup process is pretty simple, we will only have to execute a couple of steps to get it up and running.

Create the Docker network

First we will need to make the traefik-reverse-proxy Docker network. You can do this with the following command:

docker network create traefik-reverse-proxy

Generate a TLS certificate

We will generate a certificate in order to allow HTTPS requests on our development environment. The certificate will be a wildcard certificate, this is done so that all your development applications can use this certificate.

Depending on your preference, you can select between localhost, dev and test as the top level domain.

cd tls

# If you want to use .localhost, run
./generate_wildcard_localhost_certificate.sh

# If you want to use .dev, run
# ./generate_wildcard_dev_certificate.sh

# If you want to use .test, run
# ./generate_wildcard_test_certificate.sh

Important

We assume that you use the ".localhost" top level domain in this container.

If you use something else, you will also have to update the router rule inside the docker-compose.yml file of this repository and all the project that you are hosting.

Start the container

Once you have done all of that, you are ready to get started!

Simply run the following command to start the Traefik container:

docker-compose up -d

Traefik dashboard

If you want to see which containers are using Traefik at the moment, you can visit the Traefik dashboard.

You can visit the Traefik dashboard at https://traefik.localhost.

Note

The Traefik Dashboard requires you to log in, the default credentials are as follows:

Username: traefik

Password: PLEASE_change_THE_default_CREDENTIALS!

Warning

It's highly recommended that you change the credentials inside the traefik-dashboard-auth middleware to something else. Using the default value could lead to someone unauthorized entering the Traefik dashboard.

Change the default login credentials

It's highly recommended that you change the credentials inside the traefik-dashboard-auth middleware to something else, so in this section we are going to explain how you can change them.

Run the following command to generate the required output for Traefik. Make sure to also replace your_username_here with your desired username.

echo $(htpasswd -nB your_username_here) | sed -e s/\\$/\\$\\$/g

The command will then ask for a password, enter your desired password and then you should receive a string that looks something like this:

your_username_here:$$2y$$05$$KlVS5bAXb8TL5h.vzzUMxOiOKWB6fA67zakKSY5y3oRWqBfGwD3Zu

Now change the users list of the traefik-dashboard-auth middleware that's located in the docker-compose.yml file.

Once you have done that, restart the container and you should now be able to log in with your new credentials.

Forward non-Docker requests to upstream server

If the container is unable to find any Docker containers that matches the incoming request, it will forward the HTTP request to the host machine on port 81.

This allows you to for example use an Apache website running on the host machine as well as Docker applications on the same server, without forcing the user to manually specify the Apache port.

Traefik will automatically upgrade the request of the user to HTTPS using the traefik_wildcard certificate and key stored in the tls directory. You generated these certificates during the setup process of this container.

Troubleshooting

You may run into issues while setting up this container, the more common issues have been documented here.

Network not found

If you attempt to start the container and get an error like this:

Error response from daemon: network traefik-reverse-proxy not found

Then you most likely forgot to create the traefik-reverse-proxy Docker network before starting the container for the first time. Check if you executed all the steps in the setup section and then try again.

Ports are not available (Permission denied)

If you are using Docker Desktop and you get an error like this:

Error response from daemon: Ports are not available: exposing port TCP 127.0.0.1:443 -> 0.0.0.0:0: listen tcp 127.0.0.1:443: bind: permission denied

Then make sure that you use the Docker engine of the host machine and not the build in one from Docker Desktop. This is because ports below 1024 are considered "privileged" on Linux and require higher permissions that the Docker Desktop engine doesn't have.

Using the system/default Docker engine should resolve the issue.