I’m happily serving a few websites and services publicly. Now I would like to host my Navidrome server, but keep the contents private on the web to stay out of trouble. I’m afraid that when I install a reverse proxy, it’ll take my other stuff online offline and causes me various headaches that I’m not really in the headspace for at the moment. Is there a safe way to go about doing this selectively?
If you don’t configure your other services in the reverse proxy then you have nothing to worry about. I don’t know of any proxy that auto discovers services and routes to them by default. (Traefik does something like this with Docker services, but they need Docker labels and to be on the same Docker network as Traefik, and you’re the one configuring both of those things.)
Are you running this on your local network? If so, then unless you forward a port to your server on the port your reverse proxy is serving from, it’ll only be accessible from the local network. This means you can either keep it that way (and VPN in to access it) or test it by connecting directly to your server on that port and confirm that it’s working as expected before forwarding the port.
Thank you so much. That clears up all my doubts. I’m running an ARM server ok the lan with port forwarding for HTTP (80) Gemini (1965) and SMB (not forwarded).
I made a typo in my original question: I was afraid of taking the services offline, not online.
Gotcha, that makes more sense.
If you try to run the reverse proxy on the same server and port that an existing service is using (e.g., port 80), then you’ll run into issues. You could also run into conflicts with the ports the services themselves use. Likewise if you use the same outbound port from your router. But IME those issues will mostly stop the new services from starting - you’d have to stop the services or restart your machine for the new service to have a chance to grab the ports while they were unused. Otherwise I can’t think of any issues.
That’s reassuring. Thanks, I was struggling with the concept and where to start but I should be fine now since I’m handy enough with a terminal.