So, I have a few services (Jellyfin, Home Assistant, etc) that I am running, and have been acessing via their IP’s and port numbers.

Recently, I started using NGINX so that I could setup entries in my Pi Hole, and access my services via some made up hostname (jellyfin.home, homeassistant.home, etc).

This is working great, but I also own a few domains, and thought of adding an SSL cert to them as well, which I have seen several tutorials on and it seems straight forward.

My questions:

  • Will there be any issues running SSL certs if all of my internal service are inward facing, with no WAN access? My understanding is that when I try to go to jellyfin.mydomainname.com, it will do the DNS lookup, which will point to a local address for NGINX on my network, which the requesting device will then point to and get the IP of the actual server.

  • Are there risks of anything being exposed externally if I use an actual CA for my cert? My main goal is to keep my home setup off of the internet.

  • @rootOPEnglish
    2•2 years ago

    Very nice! And you don’t have to worry about adding the cert to each device that wants to use the service, right? Since this isn’t a self hosted CA.

    • @phiEnglish
      4•2 years ago

      exactly. that was the main thing i wanted to avoid. i also have nginx-proxy-manager in front of all my apps which also automates some things (like requesting new certs or renewing them when the time comes)

      • @rootOPEnglish
        1•2 years ago

        Ooo, very nice! If I use that script, can I generate certificates for a made up domain within my network (eg *.homelab), or do I need to use a domain I actually own?