r/selfhosted 17h ago

Self Help Using caddy + apache, to access by tailscale only

I just want to bounce an idea I thought of that would simplify my setup of my self hosted web base services.
First I access my system only by Tailscale, there is reverse proxy, no registered domain, nothing. I access all my docker services via tailscale services that are provisioned by Docktail, and everything works.
However I have a few (3-4) web base custom services that run on a bare metal installed apache web server, but I want to access them also via tailscale, with a let’s crypt cert (the web apps require https) so while i could (and to) use tailscale cert to get the required https certificate, I have to remember to renew the cert every 90 days, while not too complicated or tedious I wanted to automate the process.
So I thought if I moved apache to say 8080 then installed caddy to act as a reverse proxy to the apache but caddy would only be acceptable via tailscale and would use the tailscale domain it would get the required cert and renew them.
The question is does this sound like a dumb overly complicated way of doing this and would it there be any conflict as i’m using tailscale services for my docker stuff and potentially caddy for the bare metal web stuff.
It seems reasonable to me, but I have a tendency to sometimes over complicate things the other people think I’ve lost my mind (which I probably have 😉).
If anyone has the time to just tell me it’s not a bad idea or it’s dumb and move on that’s fine. I know some would just ask AI the question, but I being old school would prefer to ask people even at the risk of being downvoted 😎

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u/asimovs-auditor 17h ago

Expand the replies to this comment to learn how AI was used in this post/project.

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u/VE3VVS 17h ago

There was absolutely no AI involved, in fact the whole point of the post was to not use AI