Remote access with Docker

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41

Try adding the config for reverse proxies posted by nikito7 to your home assistant default configuration.yaml file. Many older guides don’t mention this since the requirement to add that to the config was more recent in the June 2021 release

42

Hi mwav3,
Sorry to bother you again but I have replaced my nginx config within the swag docker with your version, making the mydomain.duckdns.org and local HA instance IP-address changes as required. Restarted the container or even the machine.

I’ve also had the ISP finally put the modem in bridge mode, which took 2 phone calls before they finally did it.
I feel like I have done everything as they were described in the guide above and your comment(s), but it doesn’t work…

  • I can access the HA login page on my phone through 4G on homeassistant.[subdomain].duckdns.org and [subdomain].duckdns.org

  • adding a https:// prefix only leads to “… can’t find server” errors

  • When on the local network, I can go to https://[Local IP of HA], which presents the landing page of SWAG.

  • I cannot go however to https://[Local IP of HA]:8123 and use HA locally with HTTPS, leading to another “… can’t find server” error.

Could you please help me? Thanks so much in advance!

43

Go into you nginx default conf file and be sure that any http connection coming in on port 80 is automatically upgraded to https on port 443. The following lines should be in the file uncommented

# redirect all traffic to https
server {
	listen 80 default_server;
	listen [::]:80 default_server;
	server_name mydomain.duckdns.org;
	return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}

This should make any connection work and be secure https regardless of whether it starts with http, https, or you don’t specify either.

That’s what should happen. Swag is running on port 443 which is your https connection, so it will just go to swag, not home assistant. To use swag as a reverse proxy on the local lan requires more configuration I’m not familiar with. I only use swag for external connections, and not internally

That is expected. Swag only runs on ports 80 and 443. Anytime you’re on the lan and specify a different port, the connection isn’t going through swag and won’t go to https. Ie specifying the :8123 will go direct to home assistant and bypass swag. I don’t use https to access Home Assistant on the local network (just http), and not sure how you can configure that. Putting home assistant behind ssl on the local lan will probably block many local integrations from working properly.

44

I’ve not omitted any part of your nginx configuration, and the server{} section is definitively in the config file, uncommented and with the required changes made…

I’ve dropped into the docker shell and ran nginx -t which was recommended to me by somebody else, and it returned:

root@[docker id]:/config/nginx# nginx -t
nginx: [emerg] "server" directive is not allowed here in /config/nginx/nginx.conf:4
nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test failed

Perhaps this could help in finding out where the problem is.

I have little to no desire to run https on HA locally, I was only trying to give a complete insight in the experienced behavior of HA and swag right now to give complete information in order to solve the problem :+1:

45

There’s definitely a problem with the nginx config based on that command.

I looked into the configs further and it appears there were recent updates to the default nginx configs in swag in the September release, so that could be causing some conflicts with the original post and my config I gave you earlier.

If you are going to use the homeassistant.subdomain.conf.sample file, nginx configs are spread across multiple files (default.conf, nginx.conf, proxy.conf, ssl.conf, and homeassistant.subdomain.conf) and a problem with any of these will cause an issue. Because it becomes difficult to track the config across multiple files, I followed the advice in this guide, Nginx Reverse Proxy Set Up Guide – Docker and my whole config is in the default.conf file, and I just make changes there, and don’t use the homeassistant.subdomain.conf file.

If you don’t go the route in that guide to put everything in one config, and since I don’t know where the issue is on your config, what you can try doing is restore the default configs. To do that, backup everything, stop swag, and delete any of the changed files in the volume (default.conf, nginx.conf, proxy.conf, ssl.conf, and homeassistant.subdomain.conf). Restarting swag will then restore these config files back to the default ones. Then try to change the name of homeassistant.subdmain.conf.sample to drop the .sample, and see if that works.

You also need to replace the line

set $upstream_app homeassistant;

With

set $upstream_app 192.168.XX.XXX;

Using the ip of the machine running home assistant. Since Home Assistant is in host networking mode, it can’t be reached on the docker network by container name and you need to spell out the ip

46

I’ve spent another entire day on it, and it seems like I’m making progress.
I just nuked swag (a couple times) and found out what (some) of my initial faults were.

Firstly, I had forwarded 80 and 443… to port 8123, which should have been 80 to 80 and 443 to 443, something that wasn’t clear in some of the posted guides. This caused the LetsEncrypt certification validation to fail; the LetsEncrypt servers couldn’t connect to port 80 and verify ownership of the domain, which in turn I suspect caused problems with nginx. Okay, so with that fixed, I was quickly able to reach the SWAG page with HTTPS enabled from the WAN. After that I changing the required variables in nginx.conf and homeassistant.subdomain.conf, just as the linked Nginx Reverse Proxy Guide dictates. Doing it all in one file makes it a bit more difficult for me and my limited knowledge I think, so I just followed what was dictated there.

I did another check with docker exec + nginx -t and it reported “test successful”.
I was able to reach the home assistant login page with HTTPS on homeassistant.[subdomain].duckdns.org on my phone from the WAN without any problems.

Then I had some problems with the iOS app not wanting to accepting the LetsEncrypt certificate when changing the “external URL” field in settings. I removed the whole server and re-added it, which seemed to fix it! It did gave me a couple warnings about the certificate containing errors, something about the SSL-hostname not matching the name(s) in the certificate. I don’t know if that happens to everyone using letsencrypt, or if still messed up somewhere. But it works now!

I still have to set-up push notifications, which was the whole reason I went down this path. And I still have to setup cert renewal somewhere/somehow, but that’s for another weekend. Thanks for your support so far! I am very grateful.

47

I have an IOS phone and haven’t received this warning, did it only come up at the initial setup or is it something you are seeing continuously? It’s possible that because you are using a wildcard cert that its not seeing an “exact” match between the website and certificate and sending out an error. It sounds like you are able to get through it though and get everything working though, so I doubt there is any issue with the config on your end.

Also glad you were able to confirm using the homeassistant.subdomain.conf file still works.

1 Like
49

hi,
I have no knowledge of qnap.
I assume you can ssh into the system ok but are having difficulty creating the docker-compose.yml file. What text editor qnap has (vim, nano,…) I don’t know.
But in any case trying to create the file using eg nano is a nightmare unless you are a unix enthusiast.
I use my android phone to connect and create the file. The file manager program CXExplorer ( free from playstore) can establish a SFTP network connection (port 21) that allows you to browse the remote file system thru SSH.
Where you create the file isn’t critical , but run the docker-compose command from the directory you created it in.
Hope that helps

50

hi thanks for the reply. I found the folder and compiled the file with nototepad++ based on the .yml on the first post and put it in the folder. I ran the docker-compose config command to validate and view the file and it seems to return no errors (first it gave an error for bad indentation). however still there are steps that elude me… the folders mentioned on the first post /home/user/volumes/hass and
/home/user/volumes/swag
do i have to create them manually?

51

yes, create them manually. Docker will create them if they dont exist, but then you will have permission problems as docker owns thrm, noy you

52

I tried the docker-compose command without creating the folders but nothing happened and nothing was created! I think I’m doing something wrong but I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.

53

I just wanted to say thanks a lot!
its working had to adjust the docker network but it is working!

54

Thanks for the info.
Could you let me know what change you made for the network.
I have recently installed another system and found that I didn’t need the network. ( My other system is not ‘usual’, running PostmarketOS on a old Nexus5 )
Maybe my guide could do with an update

55

Ran through this today - Thanks for the writeup. One question though - when I access my HA through the proxy, weather it be from my local network or on cell data, the website gets flagged by chrome as “Dangerous” saying that it is a deceptive site.

Any idea why this might be? The site is still being shown as secure.

56

Hi,
Sorry for delay in reply but I have been travelling.
I’m not sure why this happens, I think maybe google thinks duckdns is suspicious.
Try clearing the browser cookies.

57

This worked well, so thanks for the guide. It’s also useful if you have e.g. Plex or something else on the same box to proxy everything and have them all on their own hostname or have to remember port names.

I had a few issues configuring, not being that familiar with docker, it took me a while to figure out that docker uses a separate network and bridges them, if you do e.g. cat home-assistant.log you can see if there are errors about untrusted proxy, in which case you need to correct the Docker network subnet in configuration.yaml.

But all good so thanks again.

58

Just noting for future users. I followed the initial instructions right at the top and everything works fine for me now 2024-01-15.

I plan to still go through and tweak with feedback provided further down the thread.

My setup is on a Raspberry Pi 4 with Home Assistant installed by docker compose prior to finding this guide.

My special thanks to @bry and @mwav3.

3 Likes
59

Thanks a lot! tried different approaches but only this one worked for me, had a bit of a mess with some port forwarding rules that remained from previous approaches, but once cleared - works like it should.