Ok so I have a domain registered, for these purposes I will refer to it as mydomain.com.
I also have Shared Hosting (just fyi) so I may be restricted in doing what I am planning.
So basically I have a sub-domain, gserver.mydomain.com, which points to a directory on the Host server showing basically a seperate website for this subdomain displaying information about it's corresponding gameserver.
Since it's about a gameserver, naturally I would want gserver.mydomain.com to also direct users to the gameserver's IP but I can't have it both to the Web Server and Game Server in the zone record as they are seperate IPs.
If the gameserver listens on.. let's say port 2400, then is it possible to have gserver.mydomain.com:2400 point to another IP (the gameserver's IP) while still retaining the Web Hosts IP on port 80.
I have a general idea of how to go about it but with the current Hosting Plan, restrictions may be preventing me.
Talking about DNS, it's not possible to use port (tcp or udp) information, as it handles only name/ip's (basicaly).
So, gserver.mydomain.com will always be resolved to the IP in the DNS database, regardless of the :port. Actualy, the :port is not part of the DNS name.
If all of your server will be HTTP servers and you have access to an Apache web servers, you can use something like proxy_pass.
You can take a look at this link http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/mod_proxy.html#proxypass
Related
I set up DNS server using CloudFlare few days ago. After then I found that CloudFlare provides reverse proxy. In "off-the-orange" state, I can connect server through ssh but In "orange" state, it's not.
Now I know that I have to register other A-Record like "ssh.domain.com" In "off-the-orange" then I can get what I want. However I can't sure it's right.
Is there other way to connect server through other protocol?
No, there is no other way, that's exactly what Cloudflare expects you to do, see: How do I SSH? and DDoS Prevention: Protecting The Origin. Cloudflare doesn't offer reverse proxy without DDoS protection.
If you have only one domain, you add subdomain A record for actual server, pointing to the server IP. Then you add CNAME for protected website. Cloudflare uses CNAME flattening so it's possible to have CNAME like my-domain.com -> actual.my-domain.com.
That setup has security implications: If someone finds out the subdomain, it exposes the real IP address and attacker can bypass Cloudflare protection.
Cloudflare DNS is very strict on how they respond. They don't leak anything, you have to explicitly know domain and record type to get the answer. Ie. digmy-domain.com ANY does not give away anything, you have to ask for a record type: dig my-domain.com A which returns Cloudflare proxy IP. And obviously, they don't respond to AXFR request either so only way to get actual IP from Cloudflare DNS is brute-force. I have feeling Cloudflare might detect and block such attempt.
Of course, you don't want to rely on obscurity only. Some things you could do to protect your server in case IP/subdomain is exposed:
throttle ssh connections (ufw tutorial)
configure your HTTP server to respond only desired host names ie. my-domain.com and maybe www.my-domain.com (nginx example)
also, you could deny HTTP(s) connections coming outside of Cloudflare Network.
The "Orange Cloud" icon on the DNS tab of your CloudFlare Dashboard indicates that all HTTP/HTTPs requests sent to that address are going to be forwarded through CloudFlare's reverse proxy system. This means that all connections will actually hit CloudFlare's server, then CloudFlare will "proxy" the connection and pull the page from your webserver.
When you proxy connection through CloudFlare, no direct connections are created between the client and your actual web server. If you have an "A Record" in place for a purpose other than HTTP requests, you will need to create a new record without the "Orange Cloud" icon.
How to create a new record:
Select the website you would like to create a new record for.
Select the "DNS" tab.
Select the record type you would like to create.
Enter the subdomain or record name you would like to create.
Enter in the details or IP you would like to point this record to.
Example:
If you create a new record (Like sshdirect.example.com) and point it to your server's IP, and ensure that the cloud icon is grey. You can then attempt to connect to that hostname instead of your standard one.
Apache doc regarding virtual hosts states:
Your server has a single IP address, and multiple aliases (CNAMES) point to this machine in DNS. You want to run a web server for www.example.com and www.example.org on this machine.
Am I right to assume that I can also bind two domains to this single IP address using A DNS records, instead of creating one A record and CNAME record for another domain pointing to the first domain? I mean that it won't affect Apache's functionality.
Correct. The browser passes the name it is requesting. It does not care what type of DNS record was used to resolve the name to an ip address.
I usually use Cnames though for the actual domain. and point it at an a record that just represents the ip. Just a way to organize things and make it easier in the future.
How do I set up a website that's accessible within a small (office) network? I've only worked on localhost (using WAMP) so far and have no idea where to start. Also, is it possible to access that website through a pseudo domain name/alias instead of an IP?
This is of topic here - and wil be covered by lots of basic set up tutorials.
It's exactly the same process, except you need to ensure that clients on the lan can connect to the webserver runing on port 80 - i.e. make sure your firewall isn't blocking the access and that apache is listening on the LAN interface address (the default configs are usually to listen on all addresses).
is it possible to access that website...
Yes - just publish a DNS record for the webserver in your DNS server - or add it to the hosts files on all of the clients.
First URL stands for Uniform Resource Locator. It will be very difficult to remember an IP address. Instead of remembering the IP addresses URL came like www.intrepidkarthi.com. Url normally contains three parts. For example http://intrepidkarthi.com/index.php. Here "http" refers to the protocol it uses. Then the server name and then the requested file name.
Here I have enlisted the flow of working mechanism behind your browser
The flow of work
Your browser communicates with a name server to translate the server name "www.intrepidkarthi.com" into an IP Address, which it uses to connect to the server machine. * So your browser will see if it already has the appropriate IP address cached away from previous visits to the site. If not, it will make a DNS query to your DNS server (might be your router or your ISP's DNS server). DNS stands for Domain Name Server - For exapmle if you want to get karthik's phone number then you will look into your telephone directory. Likewise your computer doesn't know intrepidkarthi.com's IP address . So it looks into DNS.
The browser then formed a connection to the server at that IP address on port 80. HTTP protocol uses port number 80
The browser sends a GET request to the server, asking for the file "http://www.google.com/karthikeyan.htm". The webserver then returns the requested page and your browser renders it to the screen.
The firewall will control connections to & from your computer. For the most part it will just be controlling who can connect to your computer and on what ports. For web browsing your firewall generally won't be doing a whole lot.
Your router essentially guides your request through the network, helping the packets get from computer to computer and potentially doing some NAT (Network Address Tranlator) to translate IP addresses along the way (so your internat LAN request can be transitioned onto the wider internet and back).
I don't know what I understood is correct or not. I need to understand it completely till the hardware level at the back.
browser has no DNS cache. your operating system's tcp stack has.
the server name in DNS may have many IP addresses. the browsers usually choose one at random.
DNS is a tree. to get www.google.com, you go to google.com name service and get IP of the computer www.
returned HTML page is a small part of the information. In turn, it points your browser to establish many connections to other servers, to bring scripts, pictures, etc.
otherwise okay.
I have a server in at a hoster (which has a static IP) and want to run a server at home too and don't want to buy the dyndns package from dyndns.com
I would either like to find a program that does this without costing money and using my own server and domain so I can have myclient.domain.com or I would like to write this myself. Would I be able to do that with a custom apache conf?
EDIT:
I have 1 Server with a static ip and I want to run a server at home (dynamic IP) I want to use the server with the static ip to run as the dyndns managing server
I use zoneedit.com for my DNS servers, and they have a free dynamic service that works fine for my home box. (On the other hand, my home box changes IP about twice a year, so it's not like I stress it.)
On my home box, I have a script that polls a tiny little cgi on my colo box to return what my current IP is (because I can't get it from the router), and if it's changed, it does a "curl" to update my zoneedit settings. When I get home, I'll try to remember to post the script.
Per your revisions: Ah, then you can theoretically do that, yes. (As noted elsewhere, apache.conf is irrelevant.) Your hosted server needs to be the nameserver of record for your dynamic DNS; you should probably use a subdomain. This would be a record in your main domain's zone file of IN NS server.ip.number.here. Then you configure a DNS server on your hosted server for the dynamic namespace; you'll have to get deep into the configuration to set up the records so that they advise client nameservers not to cache them, or to cache them only very briefly. Then you write some sort of systemry where the home machine, when a connection is established, talks to the hosted server and tells it to change the DNS for the dynamic hostname to point to its currently assigned IP.
You cannot do it with a custom Apache conf. Apache handles web serving, not DNS.
Maybe I´m wrong but I think what you want is:
create a dynamic host in a free DNS service, like dyndns.org (Or you can even manager a entire domain using editdns.com which has dynamic dns also). For example: server-at-home.dyndns.org.
Create a static IP host for the desired address (ex. www2) pointing to the same IP address of the www server.
Create a virtual host in the httpd.conf in the static ip server and put a reverseproxy using the dynamic host create on item 1.
P.S.: You said that the main goal is to void to buy for this service but i use dyndns.com and i dont pay for it. And i have 4 hosts in my account.
I have a server at home with a Static IP address, and I do exactly what you are looking to do with a free dyndns account. I just have to renew it every month or two - they send me an email and I just click the link to let them know I'm still here and alive.
I am not exactly sure, but it sounds like you want to redirect to your "server" at your house from your webserver at the hosted site?
You will need to periodically send some notification to your static IP server to let it know your dynamic ip.
You can do this is some cron/scheduled job - just create a redirect html page every day and ftp it (automagically) to your static ip host.
There are probably other ways to do this. But that should work.