Https and ssl security questions involving port forwarding

1

Hi guys… I apologize for this noob rant, but I am attempting to learn and get this going so I would appreciate any help that I can get. I have scoured the forums and the internet, but can’t find answers specifically for what I am looking for. Here is what’s up:

I installed Rockstor and got it up and running just fine. I have Plex running and it works great. I am hoping to get Owncloud up so that I can access it while I am at work and replace Dropbox for privacy reasons. I have been able to access Owncloud locally just fine, but I have been unable to get Owncloud working remotely unless I forward the port it is on. The problem with that is when I forward the port i get https errors saying that the site isn’t secure and going to other sites such as google also begin giving me this error even when browsing from other computers in my home.

I am assuming that I don’t have an ssl certificate for owncloud, but I am not totally clear on how to get them working. More importantly I don’t really understand why forwarding the owncloud port seems to make all my web browsing unsecure. Are my web browsers suddenly trying to access the net via the owncloud port for some reason? I am clearly missing something… or many things.

Thank you for any help that I can get.

*Edit: One more thing… Rockstor and Owncloud both only work with http and not https in local mode if this helps at all. I am not sure if this is how it is supposed to be. I know Rockstor generates an SSL on installation, but again I don’t really know if I am supposed to do something with it or to make my http connections secure.

UPDATE - Hey guys! I’m sure that any of you reading this thought “I have no clue WTF this guys deal is” or just didn’t care, but I got everything working properly. I don’t exactly know what I did differently except I am only forwarding the ipv4 and left out the ipv6. Now i seem to be working perfectly and no security issues accessing other sites.

Rockstor works great and now that I have this working I will gladly pay for the stable updates.

2

I was indeed unsure about the https errors, but now that it appears to be working again: if you value secure transfer of sensitive data, I do suggest you look into encryption. My personal preference is to keep the LAN walled off and allow external connections only through OpenVPN. This is a little more work as it entails setting up your own public key infrastructure and some more configuration, but is very secure.

3

I have considered that and would definitely go that route if I fully understood it. I am not sure how to get owncloud working through the VPN or how exactly the OpenVPN setup works specifically with Rockstor. I can easily get the RockOn setup but then the question becomes “now what” and documentation specifically for Rockstor is scare.

4

@Tangent_Revolution Welcome to the Rockstor community and glad you managed to work our what ever was going on there with the SSL stuff.

Not sure if it’s quite what you are after but have you seen the OpenVPN Server Rock-on documentation. I suspect you have but just thought I’d mention it just in case.

1 Like
5

@phillxnet Thanks man. I have gone through the documentation. To be honest i didn’t realize there was a client involved in addition to the server. That clarified things a bit. I guess I will walk through the rest of the process and see how it goes.