Project Title

Lets Proxy

This is a simple NodeJS UI connected to nginx HTTP server to automatically request and generate Let's encrypt certificates while proxying requests to downstream servers. The idea is that you can have internal websites working without SSL but are only working via SSL connection from outside aka. interner.

Installing

First let's install nvm

wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.34.0/install.sh | bash

Logout of your SSH session and login again for nvm command to be available.

Install node v12.19.0

nvm install v12.19.0

With nvm list we can check if it was installed and is set as default node version. Should see simmilar to this:

$ nvm list
nvm list
->      v12.19.0
default -> 12.19.0 (-> v12.19.0)
node -> stable (-> v12.19.0) (default)
stable -> 8.13 (-> v12.19.0) (default)
iojs -> N/A (default)
unstable -> N/A (default)
lts/* -> lts/dubnium (-> N/A)
lts/argon -> v4.9.1 (-> N/A)
lts/boron -> v6.17.1 (-> N/A)
lts/carbon -> v8.16.0 (-> N/A)
lts/dubnium -> v10.16.0 (-> N/A)
lts/erbium -> v12.19.0 (-> N/A)

Now we are ready to clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/rmamba/letsproxy.git

Move to letsproxy folder and install node modules:

npm i

Install pm2 package as global module that we will use to run the site as daemon:

npm i pm2 -g

Let's load the pm2 configuration now with:

pm2 start ecosystem.config.js

We can now check the status and start/stop/restart it by letsProxy name.

# Check status; note that at this point it will say errored, which is ok, we did not finish configuring it yet.
pm2 list
# restart/start/stop
pm2 reload letsProxy
pm2 start letsProxy
pm2 stop letsProxy

Nginx & friands Installation

Install apt package

sudo apt install nginx acmetool
sudo openssl dhparam -dsaparam -out /etc/nginx/dhparam.pem 2048

Run acmetool configuration and input data. Note that you need to choose WEBROOT as the verification type for this to work. And enter this path when asked /var/www/.well-known/acme-challenge.

sudo acmetool quickstart

Now we can install our initial certificate and domain. In your domains DNS records add two A records pointing to your servers IP address. Two records need to be for letsproxy and *.letsproxy sub domains. So https://letsproxy.yourdomain.com will be where we will access controll panel. Once you make DNS changes it will take some time (up to 48h) for the changes to propagate around the world.

Until that happens you can expose port 3000 on your server and access control panel as http://Server_IP:3000.

Crontab

By default acmetool is not run auomatically when you change setings. This is due to long running processes not being handled correctly at this point. But you should add a cron job to be run every hour (or once per day if you can wait for updates).

sudo crontab -e
#Add this line at the bottom
0 * * * * /usr/bin/acmetool --batch > /home/ubuntu/acme.log 2>&1

This will refresh and/or request new certificates every hour.

Configuration

First lets create configuration file

cp config/config.sample.js config/config.js

Change the domain in this configuration file to point to your domain.

Start the control panel

pm2 start letsProxy

And this time when visiting http://Server_IP:3000 you will be presented with the website. Login with user admin and password letsproxy. You are advised to change this ASAP!!! Save md5 string of your password in passwd.js file and use that to login.

We also need to delete nginx sites-enabled folder and replace it with the one from our control panel. Not that you need to enter the path to you sites-enabled folder if it is not the same ;)

sudo rm -r /etc/nginx/sites-enabled
sudo ln -s /home/ubuntu/GIT/letsproxy/nginx/sites-enabled /etc/nginx/sites-enabled
sudo systemctl restart nginx

Control panel

Once logged in let us setup the certificate for our letsproxy subdomain. Under Servers section add letsproxy upstream name with 127.0.0.1 IP address and port 3000. Under Domains add new domain. Leave template at None. Enter letsproxy.yourdomain.com for the domain name. There is no need for adding any aliases, but here is where you would add www.mydomain.com for example when setting up proxy for mydomain.com. Finally choose letsproxy as your upstream and save.

In the list of domain on the right side you will see two icons. Click the left one to enable this domain. After that the nginx configuration will be generated and put into /etc/nginx/sites-enabled folder. If you click on status icon you can view the nginx config file. Lets now try our domain in browser.

Contributing

Please read CONTRIBUTING.md for details on our code of conduct, and the process for submitting pull requests to us.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE.md file for details