Rathole can help to expose the service on the device behind the NAT to the Internet, via a server with a public IP.

This set of scripts simplifies first setup of Rathole reverse proxy tunnel.

• Downloads and installs Rathole binary and systemd services.
• Creates config files for first tunnel.
• Tunnel transfer will protected with encription by Noise Protocol.

• Linux server with public IP.
• SSH access to server with superuser privileges (sudo).
• Optionally you need gateway webserver like Caddy, Nginx, Traefik etc.
• Optionally you need domain name attached to server IP (Do you need detailed instruction?).

First, download or clone this repository to your local machine.

$ git clone [email protected]:devgkz/first-rathole-setup.git
$ cd first-rathole-setup

Then upload install-bin script to server.

$ scp ./install-bin [email protected]:~

Connect to server by ssh and run script. Make it executable before. System may request sudo password.

$ chmod +x install-bin && ./install-bin

After successful installation generate keypair on server for Noise Protocol.

$ rathole --genkey

Locally open in text editor files install-server and install-client, and edit config-block:

• Set private and public keys generated above.
• Set address that server is listen for tunnel connection.
• Set your service id and token equal both on server and client.
• And addresses listens on both sides of tunnel.

After editing upload install-server file to server

$ scp ./install-server [email protected]:~

Connect to server by ssh and run script. Make it executable before. System may request sudo password.

$ chmod +x install-server && ./install-server

After installation service rathole@default will started automatically.

If you need additinal gateway webserver then configure it. I prefer Caddy as it obtains and renews TLS certificates for your sites automatically.

For example, install and configure Caddy for my tunnel and domain example.server.com on Ubuntu server.

$ sudo apt install caddy
$ sudo nano /etc/caddy/Caddyfile

Add to Caddyfile following block:

example.server.com {
	reverse_proxy localhost:4201
}

Then restart Caddy.

$ sudo systemctl restart caddy

Now Caddy receive requests to site https://example.server.com and translate they to the rathole tunnel port 4201.

Let's configure client side of tunnel. Back to local machine in project directory (first-rathole-setup) and run:

$ chmod +x install-client & ./install-client

After installation service ratholec@default will started automatically.

Start your local service and access it by public IP:port or domain name.

You may need open input port on server if firewall is on. On Ubuntu it may be made via ufw.

$ sudo ufw allow 2400

Check the systemd service rathole is running on server

$ sudo systemctl stop rathole@default

Check the systemd service ratholec is running on client

$ sudo systemctl stop ratholec@default

Original Rathole project https://github.com/rapiz1/rathole

Noise Protocol specification https://noiseprotocol.org/noise.html