[SOLVED] I had to open ports 80 and 443 (maybe 1 was enough, idk) while renewing certs ! Now its time to learn how to do it without opening ports (:

Hey guys, I have nginx proxy manager running in docker container on my home server. I don’t have any ports open (other than wireguard) and I was using custom local domain .tride to access my services. Everything works fine, I can use https://portainer.tride, https://homeassistant.tride, etc.

I want to get rid of warnings about the risk that I have to accept to continue. Not a big deal for Firefox on desktop, but its kinda annoying on Android. Also I think it stops me from using some services that require SSL certs (like floccus). I tried to create a LetsEncrypt certificate using DNS challenge and DuckDNS in NPM. I also tried to download certs and import to Android, CA cert is added successfully, but didn’t work.

Now I bought example.com domain from porkbun.com and trying to set it up:

  1. Created CNAME on porkbun - *.example.com pointing to my example.duckdns.org
  2. Created cert using same procedure (DNS challenge and DuckDNS in NPM) with hosts *.example.com and example.com
  3. Created Local DNS records in PiHole

Now I get strange behavior, sometimes I can open portainer.example.com with no problem, no warning, perfect. Then sometimes it doesn’t load at all and it says “Server Not Found”. Some services open normally, but like bookstack.example.com opens broken page and if I click anywhere it redirects me to my old bookstack.tride (still exists in NPM and PiHole) and asking to accept the risk.

I’m trying to use services from local network or wireguard only, at least for now.

I am also using the same domain for my e-mail at mailbox.org if that matters. Not sure what I’m doing wrong, but I’m sure there is something. I’m happy to listen any suggestion, and sorry for being noob <3

  • LimitEnglish
    2·
    10 months ago

    So the opening of ports works, but it’s not the most secure or best way to do it imo… what happens is the certbot registers with letsencrypts api and attempts to request a cert via http challenge, it then hosts a small website with a code from letsencrypt to prove that you do in fact own the domain and are who you say you are. Let’s encrypt then goes to the url, verifies it sees the text, and issues a cert to the certbot. The problem here is you have to open these ports to the internet, and they need to be open when certificates are renewed (let’s encrypt only issues a 90 day cert)… if you want to leave those ports open that’s not exactly a safe practice, and manually doing it every 3 months is less than ideal…

    With dns challenge, the certbot uses the api of your dns provider (cloudflare or porkbun), the process is similar, it talks with letsencrypt, let’s encrypt gives it a string and a dns record it expects to see, then certbot talks to your dns, makes a txt record with the string provided, then let’s encrypt checks for that dns record, if it finds it, it issues a cert to the certbot. In this scenario, certbot is connecting out to your dns provider and making the record for you, no opening of ports. And if you leave the api key active, it will auto renew on a schedule so you don’t have to really worry about it.

    I highly recommend looking into dns challenge some more, watch some videos on it there are lots on YouTube.

    As for the dns record, not sure if it’s not allowing the wildcard record or what but I wouldn’t use *.example.com, make an entry for the actual host/service you are hosting, like portainer.example.com.

    • rambosOPEnglish
      1·
      10 months ago

      Thank you for explaining this, its much more clear now. I’ll definitely look more into dns challenge and hopefully be ready before next renewal :D Have a nice day mate