Open source ngrok alternative

During a client onsite last year, I was first introduced to ngrok. Ngrok provides “secure introspectable tunnels to localhost.” The free tier of ngrok provides temporary, random subdomains to use. This is fine most of the time, but kind of causes problems for things like Jetpack that require persistent domain names for connecting.

While I could shell out the $5/month for the lowest paid tier of ngrok, I would still be limited to a certain number of domains and connections.

While looking for an alternative to ngrok, I came across sish. Sish is “an open source serveo/ngrok alternative. HTTP(S)/WS(S)/TCP Tunnels to localhost using only SSH.” To be honest, I don’t understand most of those words, but that won’t stop me!

I of course needed a server somewhere to run this on, so I ran over to DigitalOcean and decided to spend my $5/month on a general purpose VPS instead (Here’s my DigitalOcean referral link if you’re so inclined).

What follows is my notes I took to install sish and get it up and running. I can’t guarantee they’re perfect, and I don’t feel like deleting my VPS and starting over again just to make sure 🙂 If you see something wrong, feel free to comment me a correction or question.

Step 1: Make a wildcard subdomain (ex *.sish.example.com)

Step 2: Set up a DigitalOcean droplet.

Step 3. Log in and run:

# Make a house a home
echo "export PS1=\"\\[\\033[38;5;33m\\]\\u\\[\$(tput sgr0)\\]\\[\\033[38;5;11m\\]@\\[\$(tput sgr0)\\]\\[\\033[38;5;33m\\]\\H\\[\$(tput sgr0)\\]\\[\\033[38;5;15m\\]:\\[\$(tput sgr0)\\]\\[\\033[38;5;11m\\]\\w\\[\$(tput sgr0)\\]\\[\\033[38;5;15m\\]\\\\$ \\[\$(tput sgr0)\\]\"" >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc
apt update
apt upgrade
apt install ack-grep mc byobu git curl locate
updatedb

# Security
ufw allow http
ufw allow https
ufw allow ssh
ufw allow 2222
ufw --force enable
apt install fail2ban

# Create swapfile
fallocate -l 1G /swapfile
chmod 600 /swapfile
mkswap /swapfile
swapon /swapfile
echo '/swapfile none swap sw 0 0' | tee -a /etc/fstab

# Install Docker
apt install apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl gnupg-agent software-properties-common
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo apt-key add -
add-apt-repository "deb [arch=amd64] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/ $(lsb_release -cs) stable"
apt update
apt install docker-ce docker-ce-cli containerd.io

# Install Certbot
certbot-auto certonly --manual -d *.sish.example.com --agree-tos --no-bootstrap --preferred-challenges dns-01 --server https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory
certbot certonly –manual -d *.sish.example.com –agree-tos –no-bootstrap –manual-public-ip-logging-ok –preferred-challenges dns-01 –server https://acme-v02.api.letsencrypt.org/directory

# Install Keys
curl https://github.com/my_github_username.keys > ~/sish/pubkeys/my_github_username
cp -f /etc/letsencrypt/live/sish.example.com-0001/* ~/sish/ssl/
ssh-keygen
ln -s ~/.ssh/id_rsa ~/sish/ssh_key

# Run Sish
cat << "EOF" > /root/sish/docker-start.sh
/usr/bin/docker run --name sish \
  -v ~/sish/ssl:/ssl \
  -v ~/sish/keys:/keys \
  -v ~/sish/pubkeys:/pubkeys \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  --net=host antoniomika/sish:latest \
  -sish.addr=sish.example.com:2222 \
  -sish.adminenabled=true \
  -sish.auth=false \
  -sish.bindrandom=false \
  -sish.domain=sish.example.com \
  -sish.forcerandomsubdomain=false \
  -sish.http=:80 \
  -sish.https=:443 \
  -sish.httpsenabled=true \
  -sish.httpspems=/ssl \
  -sish.keysdir=/pubkeys \
  -sish.pkloc=/keys/ssh_key \
  -sish.redirectrootlocation=https://example.com/ \
  -sish.serviceconsoleenabled=true
EOF

cat << EOF > /etc/systemd/system/docker-sish.service
# Thanks to https://blog.container-solutions.com/running-docker-containers-with-systemd

[Unit]
Description=Sish container
Requires=docker.service
After=docker.service

[Service]
TimeoutStartSec=0
Restart=always
ExecStartPre=-/usr/bin/docker stop sish
ExecStartPre=-/usr/bin/docker rm sish
ExecStartPre=/usr/bin/docker pull antoniomika/sish:latest
ExecStart=/bin/bash /root/sish/docker-start.sh
ExecStop=/usr/bin/docker stop sish
RemainAfterExit=true

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target
EOF

systemctl enable docker-sish
systemctl start docker-sishCode language: PHP (php)

From here, I can now set up a shortcut program to run locally to start a tunnel:

cat << "EOF" > /usr/local/bin/sish
#/bin/bash
ssh -p 2222 -R $1:80:localhost:80 root@sish.example.com
EOF
chmod +x /usr/local/bin/sishCode language: PHP (php)

Tag: ngrok

Open source ngrok alternative