Nginx Proxy Manager is a user-friendly software application designed to effortlessly route traffic to your websites, whether they're hosted at home or elsewhere. It comes equipped with free SSL capabilities, eliminating the need for extensive Nginx or Letsencrypt knowledge. This tool proves especially handy for simplifying SSL generation and seamlessly proxying your docker containers.

Nginx Proxy Manager stands as an optional but highly recommended companion application. Its inclusion is particularly beneficial when managing multiple web applications in the backend. We also recommend to include Portainer CE.

Once the deployment is complete, you need to configure the proxy host in the Nginx Proxy manager.

At First, you need to associate your domain name with the public IP of your new server!

Open http://<your_server_public_ip>:81 in your browser and enter the following credentials:

2. Next, log in to Portainer to identify the hostname to be used for proxying traffic. (You should receive the link to Portainer and the credentials in the email attached within the PDF file.)

3. Upon accessing Portainer, navigate to the "Environments" section and select "local." 

Here, you will find a list of all applications deployed with Docker. In our case, our target is the "simple-flask" application, so click on it.

Note the required hostname, in our case, it's "flask-app," and observe that it operates on port 5000. Your specific application might use a different hostname and port configuration, depending on your chosen exposed application.

5. The next step involves routing traffic to the chosen application through the Nginx Proxy Manager. While logged into Nginx PM, navigate to "Proxy Hosts."

6. Click on the "Add Proxy Host" button and provide the necessary details:

Domain Name (the domain name you acquired from your domain registrar)

Redirect Host Name/IP (the hostname of the target application you want to connect)

Redirect Port (for our case, it's 5000; however, if you use Nginx as a web server, it's likely port 80)

     If everything is correctly configured, your proxy host's status should display as "ok."

8. Proceed to visit your website using the designated domain name.

9. Should you wish to implement SSL (for availability via the HTTPS protocol), modify your proxy host settings and add SSL to it.

10. Please be cautious: You need to associate your domain name with the public IP of your site first. This can be accomplished on your domain registrar's website by modifying the "A" record value to match your new server's IP address.

Nginx Proxy Manager

Status Panel is a minimalistic open-source web application for efficient docker container management. Nothing redundant, only the most necessary features to operate your docker containers quick and easy. The software is written in Python/Flask.

GitHub: https://github.com/trydirect/status

Status Panel

Netdata is a highly scalable metrics monitoring, troubleshooting & management agent. It works in real time, collecting metrics from:

Netdata makes the metrics visualization, complex performance issues troubleshooting, and data interoperability quick and easy.

Check here what features are declared by Netdata creators:

the agent uses only 1% CPU of a single core

Netdata works with minimal disk I/O (only historical metrics written and error and access logs read).

No breaks. Netdata operates on servers of any type, edge/IoT devices, containers, and cloud deployments permanently.

No configuration and maintenance are needed.

No preparation or security measures are required for installation on your systems mid-incident.

No sudo required to install Netdata on Debian, Ubuntu, CentOS, Kubernetes, Docker, macOS, FreeBSD, and more.

Multiple operating modes: from autonomous host monitoring to central multi-host monitoring, collection, and storage.

Netdata

The web app stack deployed via TryDirect consist mainly of docker containers. Portainer is currently the most convenient tool to efficiently manage them.

You can control your machine’s Docker resources via a web interface. This means images, volumes, containers, and networks intuitive visualization.

Portainer is a universal tool in terms of the environment it works in. You can deploy it to Swarm, K8s, Azure ACI, Kubernetes (added in the 2.0 version), or Docker equally well, be that in the cloud, at the edge, or on-prem.

Portainer provides numerous governance and control tools and solutions, like:

Easy and secure deployment, management, and troubleshooting of containerized apps through a powerful GUI. Deep Kubernetes expertise is not needed.

Self-service container management system creation. You can increase your software productivity and reduce errors by building streamlined, automated workflows based on Git.

Software delivery automation with GitOPS integration.

Container environment security provision with RBAC.

These options make centralized management and multi-cluster environments security possible for the platform managers.

Portainer

phpMyAdmin is a free and open-source software tool that is easy to set up. It is created for MySQL or MariaDB database server administration and supports most database management system operations. You can manage databases, tables, columns, indexes, users, relations, permissions, and others via the intuitive web interface or directly execute any SQL statement.

phpMyAdmin has a stable and flexible codebase created by multiple contributors from the global PHP community.

CSV, SQL, XML, PDF, ISO/IEC 26300 - OpenDocument Text and Spreadsheet, Word, LATEX data export

databases, tables, fields, and indexes maintenance, creation, browsing, copying, dropping, remaining and altering

SQL-statement, incl. even batch-queries execution, edition, and bookmark

MySQL user accounts and privileges management

stored procedures and triggers management

Query-by-example (QBE) complex queries creation

For security purposes, TryDirect recommends that you first stop (pause) the phpMyAdmin container and then start it as necessary. This can be done by using Portainer or the Status Panel.

Deploy LAMP stack with phpMyAdmin included for free

phpMyAdmin

WEB TOOLS

It is important to be able to find out your server's public IP address right from the terminal while working on remote server

Check the article below, to learn how to discover your system or Server's Public IP address from the Terminal on Linux.

Нou can find your server's public IP address y using the host command:

host myip.opendns.com resolver1.opendns.com

Using domain server:
Name: resolver1.opendns.com
Address: 2620:119:35::35#53
Aliases:

myip.opendns.com has IPv6 address 2400:6180:100:d0::8e9:c001

If you want to get an IPv4 address using the host command, you can add the “-4” option to it.

host -4 myip.opendns.com resolver1.opendns.com

Using domain server:
Name: resolver1.opendns.com
Address: 208.67.222.222#53
Aliases:

myip.opendns.com has address 143.110.250.111

You can use the grep command to filter only IPv6/IPv4 by running the following command:

host -4 myip.opendns.com resolver1.opendns.com | grep "address" | awk 'NF>1{print $NF}'

host -6 myip.opendns.com resolver1.opendns.com | grep "address" | awk 'NF>1{print $NF}'

The dig command is one of the easiest methods to find the public IP address of your server.

You can execute any of the commands below to find your system IP address.

dig ANY +short myip.opendns.com @resolver1.opendns.com

dig ANY +short @resolver2.opendns.com myip.opendns.com

dig +short ANY whoami.akamai.net @ns1-1.akamaitech.net

dig +short @ns1-1.akamaitech.net ANY whoami.akamai.net

dig +short ANY o-o.myaddr.l.google.com @ns1.google.com

You can specify the IP version as shown in the below example:

dig +short ANY o-o.myaddr.l.google.com @ns1.google.com -4

Kindly note that you can use the "-4" option with dig for IPv4 and the "-6" option  for IPv6 in case you want to get a specific IP version.

Wget is a powerful command-line downloader available on most Linux distributions. The wget command allows you to find the public IP address of your system by using it with third-party websites, as shown below:

wget -qO- http://ipecho.net/plain | xargs echo

wget -qO- https://ifconfig.me | xargs echo

Just like the wget commands, you can use the curl command with a third-party service to find the public IP address of your system.

Below are some third-party services you can use with the curl command:

Congratulations! Now you can easily discover your system's public IP address using Terminal on Linux. Do we miss something useful?  Send it to us, use the contact us form.

Ho to find out your server's public IP address right from the terminal 

Find the public IP address from the terminal

Simple Firewall  - is a set of iptables rules that deny SSH access to everybody except the network range IP’s defined in the text field below. Let’s call it admin’s IP. By default, the admin's IP is detected automatically and the range is calculated based on it. Most Linux distributions have pre-installed iptables, which means Simple Firewall will not install any additional software packages on the user’s server.

Attackers' activity is usually rising right after a new VPS server is created. They often look for web applications with default admin credentials, unfinished setups, admin tools, open ports and so on. “Simple Firewall” rules were implemented and offered to protect the newly created server from various attacks like brute force attacks.

TryDirect also offers administration tools for server management purposes: Status Panel, Portainer, and Monitoring tools like Netdata, PHPMyAdmin.

Even administration tools are password-protected. This enables the“Simple Firewall'' feature to make administration tools accessible only from the specified admin's IP network. Disabling “Simple Firewall” makes admin login form public, visible for all.

Admin’s IP range can be changed to any other IP address range (e.g. 1.1.1.0/24).

Simple Firewall

tcpdump is a network packet sniffer that can capture and filter various types of traffic, including TCP, UDP, and ICMP. It is a widely used command-line tool for network monitoring and debugging, and is installed by default on many Unix/Linux distributions.

With tcpdump, you can capture live traffic and save it to a file for future analysis. The captured data is saved in pcap format, which can be read by tcpdump itself or GUI tools like Wireshark.

Tcpdump is commonly used for system security checking, penetration testing, network troubleshooting, and more. In short, it is a Swiss army knife for system administrators, network engineers, and security professionals.

This guide will provide you with the basics and practical examples of the tcpdump command.

It is recommended to run the tcpdump command with root user privileges. The tcpdump command will continue to run until you press Ctrl+C to terminate it.

The following is the tcpdump command syntax in short:

When you run tcpdump with no filters, it will show you all the packets flowing through the default interface.

You can list all the interfaces of your server by running the following command:

1.eth0 [Up, Running]
2.eth1 [Up, Running]
3.lo [Up, Running, Loopback]
4.any (Pseudo-device that captures on all interfaces) [Up, Running]
5.bluetooth-monitor (Bluetooth Linux Monitor) [none]
6.nflog (Linux netfilter log (NFLOG) interface) [none]
7.nfqueue (Linux netfilter queue (NFQUEUE) interface) [none]

You can capture all packets from all interfaces by using any interface:

For better understanding, You should use the interface name using the -i option:

For more detailed output, you can use the -v or -vv options:

You can limit the tcpdump command output using the below command:

By default, tcpdump does the DNS resolution. You can disable name resolution by using the option -n and port resolution with -nn:

This option is very useful while troubleshooting network issues.

tcpdump: verbose output suppressed, use -v or -vv for full protocol decode
listening on any, link-type LINUX_SLL (Linux cooked v1), capture size 262144 bytes
14:56:10.085238 IP 172.18.1.48.22 > 172.18.1.250.59860: Flags [P.], seq 475071168:475071392, ack 2781200040, win 501, length 224
14:56:10.085526 IP 172.18.1.48.22 > 172.18.1.250.59860: Flags [P.], seq 224:416, ack 1, win 501, length 192
14:56:10.085631 IP 172.18.1.48.22 > 172.18.1.250.59860: Flags [P.], seq 416:576, ack 1, win 501, length 160
14:56:10.085760 IP 172.18.1.48.22 > 172.18.1.250.59860: Flags [P.], seq 576:736, ack 1, win 501, length 160
14:56:10.085860 IP 172.18.1.48.22 > 172.18.1.250.59860: Flags [P.], seq 736:896, ack 1, win 501, length 160
5 packets captured
5 packets received by filter
0 packets dropped by kernel

You can capture packets with properly readable timestamps using the tcpdump -tttt option:

tcpdump: verbose output suppressed, use -v or -vv for full protocol decode
listening on any, link-type LINUX_SLL (Linux cooked v1), capture size 262144 bytes
2022-03-27 15:20:25.081838 IP 172.18.1.48.22 > 172.18.1.250.50472: Flags [P.], seq 3309433839:3309434063, ack 2385369981, win 501, length 224
2022-03-27 15:20:25.082165 IP 172.18.1.48.22 > 172.18.1.250.50472: Flags [P.], seq 224:432, ack 1, win 501, length 208
2022-03-27 15:20:25.082350 IP 172.18.1.48.22 > 172.18.1.250.50472: Flags [P.], seq 432:608, ack 1, win 501, length 176
3 packets captured
3 packets received by filter
0 packets dropped by kernel

tcpdump prints output in one line for each packet. Its syntax looks like this:

[Timestamp] [Protocol] [Src IP].[Src Port] > [Dst IP].[Dst Port]: [Flags], [Seq], [Ack], [Win Size], [Options], [Data Length]

When you type the tcpdump command, you will get output as shown in the below example:

18:13:17.425434 IP app.4436 > 157.32.66.94.45896: Flags [P.], seq 696:749, ack 632, win 3372, options [nop,nop,TS val 2489039195 ecr 16819361], length 53

18:13:17.425434 - It is the timestamp of the captured packet as per the system timezone.

app.4436 - hostname or IP with port number, separated by a dot (.).

157.35.66.94.45896 - destination hostname or IP and port number, separated by a dot (.).

Flags [P.] -  It is TCP Flags. It shows the state of the connection. In this example, [P.] means Push Acknowledgment packet.

win 3372 - It means the number of available bytes in the receiving buffer.

options [nop,nop,TS val 2489039195 ecr 16819361] - TCP options.

length 53 - The length of the data payload.

Using tcpdump Filters, you can find exactly what you are looking for. For example, when troubleshooting issues related to an FTP server, you can use filters to get only FTP traffic. Filters give you a clear idea of what exactly is going on on your server. The most used tcpdump filters are: port, protocol, host, src, dst, tcp, udp, icmp.

You can filter packets using a service name or port with the port filter. For example, you want to capture packets related to the SSH service:

12:12:59.283525 IP 139.59.3.60.22 > 182.77.112.118.62155: Flags [P.], seq 857071566:857071754, ack 3442378916, win 501, options [nop,nop,TS val 2380853868 ecr 2857908344], length 188
12:12:59.283669 IP 139.59.3.60.22 > 182.77.112.118.62155: Flags [P.], seq 188:408, ack 1, win 501, options [nop,nop,TS val 2380853868 ecr 2857908344], length 220
12:12:59.283698 IP 139.59.3.60.22 > 182.77.112.118.62155: Flags [P.], seq 408:612, ack 1, win 501, options [nop,nop,TS val 2380853868 ecr 2857908344], length 204
12:12:59.283724 IP 139.59.3.60.22 > 182.77.112.118.62155: Flags [P.], seq 612:816, ack 1, win 501, options [nop,nop,TS val 2380853868 ecr 2857908344], length 204
12:12:59.283748 IP 139.59.3.60.22 > 182.77.112.118.62155: Flags [P.], seq 816:1020, ack 1, win 501, options [nop,nop,TS val 2380853868 ecr 2857908344], length 204
5 packets captured
6 packets received by filter
0 packets dropped by kernel

You can also capture packets between port ranges as shown below:

Occasionally, you may want to capture all the packages, EXCEPT some specific port. For example, you would like to monitor all the traffic on the server but do not want to capture the port 22:

Alternatively, you can find DNS traffic using the port number, as shown in the below example:

To find FTP traffic by name, execute the below command on your FTP server:

Using protocol with the tcpdump command, you can only get packets related to a specific protocol. For example, if you want to capture only ICMP packets, then run the following command on your server:

tcpdump

How to check whether your server is online using a Linux command line.

We often need to check connectivity to troubleshoot network issues or want to check whether our server is online. We created this article to show you how to do this. There are many handy Linux tools for this:

Ping is one of the most widely used commands to check whether a server or remote host is up and responding. Ping sends ICMP ECHO_REQUEST to the server. If ICMP is blocked from the server-side or cloud provider, then the ping command may not work as expected (like AWS ec2 instance). Here, we assume that cloud provider's firewalls do not block ICMP.

➜  ~ ping example.com
PING example.com (93.184.216.34): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 93.184.216.34: icmp_seq=0 ttl=53 time=129.615 ms
64 bytes from 93.184.216.34: icmp_seq=1 ttl=53 time=130.620 ms
^C
--- example.com ping statistics ---
2 packets transmitted, 2 packets received, 0.0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 129.615/130.118/130.620/0.502 ms

Telnet is a network protocol that allows you to connect to a remote host. Telnet is usually installed on most Linux OS by default. Otherwise, you can run the following command in the terminal:

Using telnet, you can identify the availability of certain ports. You can use telnet to make sure no firewalls in between are blocking incoming connections to the server. 

System or network administrators use Telnet to configure network devices like routers and switches.

➜  ~ telnet example.com 22
Trying 111.201.251.32...
Connected to example.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_7.6p1 Ubuntu-4ubuntu0.5

The above command shows that port 22 is open on the example.com.

Let’s now check whether the webserver port is open.

➜  ~ telnet example.com 443
Trying 93.184.216.34...
Connected to example.com.
Escape character is '^]'.

Which means the port 443 is open and accessible.

If the port is firewalled  on the remote host, then you will see something like this

➜  ~ telnet example.com 22
Trying 93.184.216.34...
telnet: connect to address 93.184.216.34: Operation timed out
Trying 2606:2800:220:1:248:1893:25c8:1946...
telnet: connect to address 2606:2800:220:1:248:1893:25c8:1946: No route to host
telnet: Unable to connect to remote host

Simply speaking, nslookup is used for DNS record checks. You can use nslookup to check if your website is connected to the internet. It is also used to troubleshoot DNS-related problems.

➜  ~ nslookup example.com
Server:		8.8.8.8
Address:	8.8.8.8#53

Non-authoritative answer:
Name:	example.com
Address: 93.184.216.34

It will show the IP address and other details. Otherwise you will see the following:

➜  ~ nslookup example.com1
Server:		8.8.8.8
Address:	8.8.8.8#53

** server can't find example.com1: NXDOMAIN

By default, nslookup command output shows A records of a domain.

Nmap or Network Mapper is a powerful tool for finding open ports and network audits. In case the nmap command  is not available, you can install it executing the following command in terminal:

Nmap is also used to identify whether the host is up or not. This command will show open port and host status as below:

➜  ~ nmap example.com
Starting Nmap 7.92 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2022-03-15 12:36 EET
Nmap scan report for example.com (93.184.216.34)
Host is up (0.13s latency).
Not shown: 996 filtered tcp ports (no-response)
PORT     STATE  SERVICE
80/tcp   open   http
443/tcp  open   https
1119/tcp closed bnetgame
1935/tcp closed rtmp

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 64.63 seconds

You can easily check whether your server is running using the following command:

➜  ~ nmap -sn example.com
Starting Nmap 7.92 ( https://nmap.org ) at 2022-03-15 12:39 EET
Nmap scan report for example.com (93.184.216.34)
Host is up (0.13s latency).
Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0.23 seconds

Netcat is known as an nc command used for network scanning like Port Scanning, open Remote connections, Network debugging, read and write operation on the network, and many more.

You can easily check the reachability of remote ports using nc Command.

If port 443 is running on the server, we will get the following:

➜  ~ nc -vz example.com 443
Connection to example.com port 443 [tcp/https] succeeded!

Wget is a command-line download tool that supports HTTP, HTTPS and FTP. Wget is very useful for those who want to check any network-related issue or test connection from a Linux terminal. It will help you in web-related issues debugging.

➜  ~ wget example.com
--2022-03-15 12:42:10--  http://example.com/
Resolving example.com (example.com)... 93.184.216.34
Connecting to example.com (example.com)|93.184.216.34|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 1256 (1.2K) [text/html]
Saving to: ‘index.html’

index.html                      100%[=====================================================>]   1.23K  --.-KB/s    in 0s

2022-03-15 12:42:10 (120 MB/s) - ‘index.html’ saved [1256/1256]

➜  ~

Here we get the “200” response code from the web server and index.html file downloaded.

You can use the curl command to transfer data either from or to a server. It supports proxy support, user authentication, FTP upload, HTTP post, SSL connections, cookies, and many more. You can use curl command to test TCP ports connectivity. Let’s check SSH port connection to a temporary created demo server with CURL

➜  ~ curl -v telnet://example2.com:22
*   Trying 93.184.216.35:22...
* Connected to example2.com (93.184.216.35) port 22 (#0)
SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_7.6p1 Ubuntu-4ubuntu0.5

Now let’s check whether our web server is running on port 80 using curl.  -I option will show only headers in the output

curl -I example.com
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Encoding: gzip
Accept-Ranges: bytes
Age: 476807
Cache-Control: max-age=604800
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2022 10:48:07 GMT
Etag: "3147526947+ident"
Expires: Tue, 22 Mar 2022 10:48:07 GMT
Last-Modified: Thu, 17 Oct 2019 07:18:26 GMT
Server: ECS (nyb/1D13)
X-Cache: HIT
Content-Length: 648

~ curl -v telnet://example.com:25
*   Trying 93.184.216.34:25...
* connect to 93.184.216.34 port 25 failed: Operation timed out
* Failed to connect to example.com port 25: Operation timed out
* Closing connection 0
curl: (28) Failed to connect to example.com port 25: Operation timed out

As you see, CURL is a useful command-line tool available in Linux to check the connection with the server and port. We’ve examined the Linux command-line tools for checking server health and network connectivity in detail. These are the must-know tools for all the system and network administrators any network-related issues.

How to quickly check your server is online using linux command line tools.

DNS propagation is the time frame in which DNS modifications are being renewed over the Internet. Modifying DNS records (such as swapping the IP address specified for a particular hostname) typically takes some considerable time. It can take up to 72 hours before propagating globally. These DNS propagation times are awkward or simply inadmissible in several modern use cases.

If an IP address or other knowledge about a hostname is added or modified in a DNS record, the change must be applied to all systems in the world competing in the DNS process. When a customer completes a DNS query and reaches a system where changes have not yet been generated, the user gets the old address. That indicates the change has not propagated to that user.

There is one issue with DNS propagation. It is effective and, at the same time, one of the weakest sections. Propagation is not complete as long as you have a vast global series of DNS servers and local DNS resolvers, and a part of the chain controls the existing DNS information.

Propagation is a problem but not that intractable. Next-generation DNS base can reduce DNS propagation period from days or hours to seconds.

Why does DNS propagation take so long? Three factors affecting propagation time:

TTL is a period of time for which a query is stored in the cache of your local system or remote DNS server before the DNS resolver can request a new one. At the end of this period, DNS data from the local system is replaced by updated information, newly gathered by the DNS resolver. The lower the TTL, the quicker the propagation rate.

For example, the TTL is set to be 60 minutes. The servers in the system will continue to use old information for an hour, and it will be shown to all the website visitors in this period. Then, the local server will delete this data and create a new DNS request to get the updated information flow.

ISPs cache DNS records to provide users immediate access to their websites. They make one DNS lookup for all websites and use the outcomes for several users as practicable. Some ISPs neglect the TTL perspective and keep DNS records in the cache even if the TTL period has previously expired. This extends the propagation time.

If you change the commanding name server for your website (the DNS server that holds the official and accurate data about your web address), these changes must reflect higher up in the DNS authority. For example, if the website’s TLD extension is ".com", the name server changes will need to be updated on top-level domain (TLD) name servers. Propagation of this change can take a long time, as the root server can have a TTL of 48 hours or more to prevent abuse.

How can you check your DNS using Linux Terminal codes?

There are several websites where you can check your domain's DNS.

You can check the domain DNS information from your Linux machine using three commands.

1. How to check DNS using the dig command

The dig command is an abbreviation for "Domain Information Grover" This is a manageable tool for checking DNS name servers. It performs a DNS lookup and represents the result reflected from the queried name server.

Most DNS controllers used the dig command to resolve DNS problems because of their versatility, comfort of use, and precision in output. Other lookup tools tend to be less functional than digging.

➜  ~ dig google.com ANY +noall +answer
; <<>> DiG 9.10.6 <<>> google.com ANY +noall +answer
;; global options: +cmd
google.com.  274 IN A 142.250.185.174
google.com.  274 IN AAAA 2a00:1450:4001:811::200e
google.com.  3574 IN TXT "facebook-domain-verification=22rm551cu4k0ab0bxsw536tlds4h95"
google.com.  574 IN MX 40 alt3.aspmx.l.google.com.
google.com.  574 IN MX 30 alt2.aspmx.l.google.com.
google.com.  3574 IN TXT "google-site-verification=TV9-DBe4R80X4v0M4U_bd_J9cpOJM0nikft0jAgjmsQ"
google.com.  21574 IN NS ns1.google.com.
google.com.  3574 IN TXT "globalsign-smime-dv=CDYX+XFHUw2wml6/Gb8+59BsH31KzUr6c1l2BPvqKX8="
google.com.  3574 IN TXT "google-site-verification=wD8N7i1JTNTkezJ49swvWW48f8_9xveREV4oB-0Hf5o"
google.com.  34 IN SOA ns1.google.com. dns-admin.google.com. 433718347 900 900 1800 60
google.com.  3574 IN TXT "docusign=1b0a6754-49b1-4db5-8540-d2c12664b289"
google.com.  21574 IN NS ns4.google.com.
google.com.  3574 IN TXT "MS=E4A68B9AB2BB9670BCE15412F62916164C0B20BB"
google.com.  21574 IN CAA 0 issue "pki.goog"
google.com.  3574 IN TXT "v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ~all"
google.com.  3574 IN TXT "docusign=05958488-4752-4ef2-95eb-aa7ba8a3bd0e"
google.com.  574 IN MX 50 alt4.aspmx.l.google.com.
google.com.  574 IN MX 20 alt1.aspmx.l.google.com.
google.com.  21574 IN NS ns2.google.com.
google.com.  3574 IN TXT "apple-domain-verification=30afIBcvSuDV2PLX"
google.com.  21574 IN NS ns3.google.com.
google.com.  574 IN MX 10 aspmx.l.google.com.
➜  ~

2. How to check DNS using ns lookup command

The nslookup command is a software that looks up Internet domain name servers. nslookup has two modes: interactive and non-interactive.

Interactive mode allows users to ask the name server for data related to other hosts and domains and print a listing of hosts in that domain.

Non-interactive methods are used to print only the name of the host or domain and the demanded information. This is a network administration tool that helps you recognize and troubleshoot DNS problems.

➜  ~ nslookup -type=any google.com
;; Truncated, retrying in TCP mode.
Server:  8.8.8.8
Address: 8.8.8.8#53
Non-authoritative answer:
Name: google.com
Address: 142.250.186.142
google.com has AAAA address 2a00:1450:4001:82a::200e
google.com text = "v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ~all"
google.com text = "globalsign-smime-dv=CDYX+XFHUw2wml6/Gb8+59BsH31KzUr6c1l2BPvqKX8="
google.com mail exchanger = 20 alt1.aspmx.l.google.com.
google.com
origin = ns1.google.com
mail addr = dns-admin.google.com
serial = 433718347
refresh = 900
retry = 900
expire = 1800
minimum = 60
google.com text = "apple-domain-verification=30afIBcvSuDV2PLX"
google.com nameserver = ns3.google.com.
google.com text = "google-site-verification=wD8N7i1JTNTkezJ49swvWW48f8_9xveREV4oB-0Hf5o"
google.com text = "facebook-domain-verification=22rm551cu4k0ab0bxsw536tlds4h95"
google.com mail exchanger = 40 alt3.aspmx.l.google.com.
google.com rdata_257 = 0 issue "pki.goog"
google.com mail exchanger = 30 alt2.aspmx.l.google.com.
google.com nameserver = ns2.google.com.
google.com mail exchanger = 50 alt4.aspmx.l.google.com.
google.com nameserver = ns4.google.com.
google.com text = "docusign=1b0a6754-49b1-4db5-8540-d2c12664b289"
google.com text = "docusign=05958488-4752-4ef2-95eb-aa7ba8a3bd0e"
google.com text = "MS=E4A68B9AB2BB9670BCE15412F62916164C0B20BB"
google.com mail exchanger = 10 aspmx.l.google.com.
google.com nameserver = ns1.google.com.
google.com text = "google-site-verification=TV9-DBe4R80X4v0M4U_bd_J9cpOJM0nikft0jAgjmsQ"
Authoritative answers can be found from:

3. How to check the DNS record of a domain using the host command

The host command is a simple service for implementing DNS lookups. It is usually required to explain names to IP addresses and vice versa. If no arguments or choices are defined, the host prints a report of command-line with other alternatives as follows:

➜  ~ host -a example.com
Trying "example.com"
;; ->>HEADER<<- opcode: QUERY, status: NOERROR, id: 64565
;; flags: qr rd ra; QUERY: 1, ANSWER: 2, AUTHORITY: 0, ADDITIONAL: 0
;; QUESTION SECTION:
;example.com.   IN ANY
;; ANSWER SECTION:
example.com.  21600 IN A 93.184.216.34
example.com.  21600 IN RRSIG A 8 2 86400 20220324194307 20220304015843 1618 example.com. mjnBhgG/GRRL2Z3ErTeR7SS2xbO84arYcDK0xZBw3hoUJXSCEXLFBWrS /+H62QJxAXgeoK97DkAm6/XCHq9jEbU00HIpAiwvuS4Ee3HGeoN6sGdz oVD+Q24ojtYa8iHul/GXTkV3drApFnogSeR5El67b0FBB2RPamlujsSQ A4w=
Received 216 bytes from 8.8.8.8#53 in 143 ms

DNS propagation is a very good thing, yeah

What is DNS propagation

LINUX/UNIX CLI

What is Nginx Proxy Manager
Nginx Proxy Manager is a user-friendly software application designed to effortlessly route traffic to your websites, whether they're hosted at home or elsewhere. It comes equipped with free SSL capabilities, eliminating the need for extensive Nginx or Letsencrypt knowledge. This tool proves especially handy for simplifying SSL generation and seamlessly proxying your docker containers.

How to use Nginx Proxy Manager

Nginx Proxy Manager stands as an optional but highly recommended companion application. Its inclusion is particularly beneficial when managing multiple web applications in the backend. We also recommend to include Portainer CE.
Once the deployment is complete, you need to configure the proxy host in the Nginx Proxy manager.
At First, you need to associate your domain name with the public IP of your new server!
Open http://<your_server_public_ip>:81 in your browser and enter the following credentials:
Login: admin@example.com
Password: changeme

 

2. Next, log in to Portainer to identify the hostname to be used for proxying traffic. (You should receive the link to Portainer and the credentials in the email attached within the PDF file.)

 

3. Upon accessing Portainer, navigate to the "Environments" section and select "local." 

 

4. Proceed to "Stacks."

 

Here, you will find a list of all applications deployed with Docker. In our case, our target is the "simple-flask" application, so click on it.
Note the required hostname, in our case, it's "flask-app," and observe that it operates on port 5000. Your specific application might use a different hostname and port configuration, depending on your chosen exposed application.

 

5. The next step involves routing traffic to the chosen application through the Nginx Proxy Manager. While logged into Nginx PM, navigate to "Proxy Hosts."

 

 

6. Click on the "Add Proxy Host" button and provide the necessary details:
Domain Name (the domain name you acquired from your domain registrar)
Redirect Host Name/IP (the hostname of the target application you want to connect)
Redirect Port (for our case, it's 5000; however, if you use Nginx as a web server, it's likely port 80)

 

7. Click the "Save" button
     If everything is correctly configured, your proxy host's status should display as "ok."

 

8. Proceed to visit your website using the designated domain name.

 

9. Should you wish to implement SSL (for availability via the HTTPS protocol), modify your proxy host settings and add SSL to it.

 

 

10. Please be cautious: You need to associate your domain name with the public IP of your site first. This can be accomplished on your domain registrar's website by modifying the "A" record value to match your new server's IP address.
