I’ve been using Linux for decades, I’ve worked as a software engineer/architect/sre for around a decade, but networking has always been my biggest gap in knowledge.

I have a local server, I have caddy spun up, a glinet router running their version of openwrt, and I have a domain name purchased through porkbun.

I am looking to setup “local.domain.com” to point to my local server, ideally without exposing it publicly, and enable devices on my home network to be able to access it from that url. Id also like to be able to access containers running on that server by something like “searxng.local.domain.com” or “local.domain.com/searxng” aka without using the port suffix. Id also like to enable https.

I have read so many guides that have fragments of what I need, but nothing that ties enough together to get it working. And with all the options around different domain registers, let’s encrypt, reverse proxies, etc, im struggling just a bit.

Are their any guides (prefer text over YouTube, but beggars cant be choosers) that people recommend that encompass the whole process, instead of just pieces? Id like to understand it instead of just fumble through it.

  • dabe@lemmy.zipEnglish
    2·
    8 hours ago

    This is the way. Been running (basically) this for years and genuinely keep my eye out for any simpler suggestions, but nothing comes close.

    I do it slightly different where I use an external DNS (bunny) and point the A records to the tailscale IP of the server running Caddy.

    The benefits are:

    • I don’t force the whole house to rely on my local DNS setup.
    • Nothing breaks when I change routers and mess up IP mappings (which I was doing a lot, but I finally got some nice unifi equipment, so maybe I don’t have to worry about that anymore).
    • I don’t “leak my LAN configuration” to public DNS but I don’t care about that anymore.
    • I can use Tailscale DNS override if I want just my tailnet devices to go through some private/premium DNS resolver.
    • Don’t need to set up subnet routing in Tailscale

    The downside is it doesn’t work at all for devices not on Tailscale. Real bummer when, like, I want my smart TV to just be able to find jellyfin on my LAN with the same domain names. But everything else about it is very convenient.