I recently generated a self-signed cert to use with NGINX via it’s GUI.
- Generate cert and key
- Upload these via the GUI
- Apply to each Proxy Host
Now when I visit my internal sites (eg, jellyfin.home) I get a warning (because this cert is not signed by a trusted CA) but the connection is https.
My question is, does this mean that my connection is fully encrypted from my client (eg my laptop) to my server hosting Jellyfin? I understand that when I go to jellyfin.home, my PiHole resolves this to NGINX, then NGINX completes the connection to the IP:port it has configured and uses the cert it has assigned to this proxy host, but the Jellyfin server itself does not have any certs installed on it.
Heyia ! I battled a few weeks to get my own mini-ca to work in my own lan (green padlock, no warning) while a lot of people would argue that it doesn’t add much security wise and give a fault sense of protection, it still encrypts your communication in your LAN.
Normally you will give NGNIX a “server” certificate, the one that will be tested against your rootCA installed on your computer/laptop for each service (or a wildcard domain cert).
If you want to see if your communication is encrypted and secure, give wireshark a try and look if your communication is in plaintext or encrypted gibberish !
Also If you want I got some good documentation on how to create your own mini-ca in your homelab !
Ah, I guess I might need to add my RootCA to my phone, laptop, pc huh? That would get rid of the untrusted warnings. Yes, please feel free to share if you have documentation!
Update: I setup my own local CA and got it working. Thanks for the tip!
Unlikely, if there are no certs in jellyfin itself. Did you configure jellyfin for https and configure nginx to use the https port?
I haven’t. I created this custom cert and uploaded in in NGINX (NGINX itself isn’t using SSL) and applied it to each proxy client, then when I visit one of them it appears to be HTTPS, but I feel that it probably isn’t actually giving me the protections I imagine.
If jellyfin isn’t configured for https, then the proxy is terminating the encryption and it proceeds unencrypted. If it’s purely internal routing that’s fine, but if not then additional configuration is required.
But if it’s all on the LAN, it’s probably not a big deal in any case.
Gotcha, that matches my assumptions. Yes everything is internal. It’s accessible remotely via Wireguard, but I mostly wanted to get some practice with NGINX/ TLS certs (also way easier to refer to things around the house with
<service>.homelab
isntead ofIP:port
, haha.So if I did want this to be fully encrypted, I would essentially need to configure each service (jellyfin, home assistant, etc) to have SSL on them with this self-signed cert/ key that I used on NGINX (or perhaps new cert/ key) and then I would be all set?
Is Jellyfin running on the same host as nginx? Then, yes your connection to jellyfin is encrypted.