A Thank You + A Question

[evonh]

First off, let me start this post by saying how great of a product the UBOSbox is. I've wanted my own nextcloud 18 server since it was released but was hesitant due to the lack of "plug n' play" options on the market - then I found the UBOSBox and instantly purchased. My experience with the product since I've gotten it today is superb. The device is so easy to set up and get going. For designing such a great product you all at Indie Computing Corp. have my sincere gratitude.

Now, here is my simple question:

My main usecase for the UBOSbox is Nextcloud Talk. I will be on video calls for about 12 hours every day continuously. This (correct my if I'm wrong please) requires me to have my UBOSbox connected to the public internet so the other person can connect to the server outside of my apartment.

I am unable to use Pagekite due to the limitations of having to be on Talk video calls 12 hours a day and this would get costly, plus I would rather not go through a 3rd party service.

My question is this: How do I connect my UBOSBox to one of my domain names so that the other person is able to access my UBOSbox and hop on Talk calls with me, and use the other functions of Nextcloud from their own account that I've set up for them?

edit: and also have the site/connection be SSL encrypted?

edit2: I was reading through the documentation and was going to attempt to create a new site but UBOS says I can't create any new sites due to there already being a hostname of '*'. Not sure what to do about that. Any help appreciated!

Thank you for your help,

- Evon

[j12t]

Assuming you have your UBOSbox behind a firewall -- most people in a home setting do -- you need to make it possible for people outside of your network to connect to your box. If you don't like Pagekite, you can open up a port on your home router that points to your UBOSbox (how to do that is specific to your router, and we can't assist directly).

If you do open up a port, you also probably want to use dynamic DNS service so you can reach your box with a consistent name even if your ISP issues different IP addresses to your router over time (there's some info about this here: https://ubos.net/docs/users/networking.html). Then you can redeploy your site to the hostname you got from the dynamic DNS service and add TLS to it.

This is a more involved process than we like, but an inherent problem for all server deployments behind typical consumer broadband.

[evonh]

Assuming you have your UBOSbox behind a firewall -- most people in a home setting do -- you need to make it possible for people outside of your network to connect to your box. If you don't like Pagekite, you can open up a port on your home router that points to your UBOSbox (how to do that is specific to your router, and we can't assist directly).

If you do open up a port, you also probably want to use dynamic DNS service so you can reach your box with a consistent name even if your ISP issues different IP addresses to your router over time (there's some info about this here: https://ubos.net/docs/users/networking.html). Then you can redeploy your site to the hostname you got from the dynamic DNS service and add TLS to it.

This is a more involved process than we like, but an inherent problem for all server deployments behind typical consumer broadband.

Hi j12t, thank you for your help. So if I'm understanding this correctly the steps are as follows:

1. Open up a port that points to my UBOSbox.
2. Use a dynamic DNS service so I can reach my box with a consistent name
3. Redeploy my site to the hostname I got from the dynamic DNS and add TLS to it

While I understand the steps at a high level, I don't really know how to do anything past step 1.

Can you point me in the right direction, maybe to a tutorial or documentation you found to be helpful, of how to use a dynamic DNS service, as well as how to redeploy my site to the hostname I got from the dynamic DNS while adding TLS to it?


I sincerely appreciate all your help, we're all very excited over here to use the UBOSbox!

edit: I'm stuck on a few things that explicit direction would be extremely helpful to have if you could please let me know how to do the following:

1. How do I figure out what port to open for the UBOSbox?
2. How do I redeploy my site to my specified hostname and add TLS?
3. How do I create a new site? I'm getting this error when trying:
ERROR: There is already a site with hostname * (any), so no other site can be created.

[j12t]

Most of this is documented in the UBOS documentation at https://ubos.net/docs/

[evonh]

I see. Can you point me to the page in the documentation where it says how to create a new site when getting the error: ERROR: There is already a site with hostname * (any), so no other site can be created. when attempting to create a new site? I can't seem to find it.

[j12t]

Well, like most documentation, it's not structured by all possible errors and their resolutions I suggest you read about Sites and their structure.

However, chances are you don't actually want to create a second Site: that would give you a second Nextcloud install (I presume that's what you would do) with its own separate users and data at a second hostname. Instead, I would think you would probably want to redeploy your existing Site from the wildcard ("anything goes") hostname called * to the name your DDNS service gives you so you can add TLS for that hostname. To do that, redeploy your site JSON with the hostname you want, instead of *. See also https://ubos.net/docs/users/ubos-admin. ... min-deploy

Note that you don't need to do that if all you do is open a port on your router. I suggest you do that, and get that working first including ddns. Once you have that working, then I'd worry about TLS but not before.

[evonh]

Well, like most documentation, it's not structured by all possible errors and their resolutions I suggest you read about Sites and their structure.

However, chances are you don't actually want to create a second Site: that would give you a second Nextcloud install (I presume that's what you would do) with its own separate users and data at a second hostname. Instead, I would think you would probably want to redeploy your existing Site from the wildcard ("anything goes") hostname called * to the name your DDNS service gives you so you can add TLS for that hostname. To do that, redeploy your site JSON with the hostname you want, instead of *. See also https://ubos.net/docs/users/ubos-admin. ... min-deploy

Note that you don't need to do that if all you do is open a port on your router. I suggest you do that, and get that working first including ddns. Once you have that working, then I'd worry about TLS but not before.

Thanks a lot j12t! Your help is much appreciated. I will give that a shot.

[criky]

Hi there
Now that I am running my own Nextcloud app with UBOS, and the Nextcloud talk as well.

Well, comparing to other major messaging apps, I found the Nextcloud talk not to be so useful as I expected before installing.

So if that is the only reason for running Nextcould, then just try it out before you do this tricky job. Thanks.