A short guide on how to use Cloudflare Tunnels to securely expose your services to the internet in just a few minutes 🥳

cloudflare-tunnels.md

How to create a Cloudflare (Argo) Tunnel

Cloudflare Tunnels are a great way to securely expose local services to the internet indefinitely, without releaving your IP address or poking holes in your firewall.
It's basically a reverse ssh tunnel on steroids, free, and offers a rock-solid connection.
Once set up (takes 10 mins tops), you can easily add another exposed service in just 30 seconds by editing a config file and restarting the tunnel.

Requirements:

• Cloudflare account (free)
• A domain added to your CF account
• cloudflared installed
  • once installed, you'll have to authenticate by running cloudflared tunnel login (you might need a browser installed on your system for this)

Using the command line

$ cloudflared tunnel create <tunnel name>
$ cloudflared tunnel run --url <local destination url> <tunnel name>
# once the tunnel is connected:  
$ cloudflared tunnel route dns <tunnel name> <tunnel subdomain to use>.<domain>  

This creates a new tunnel, starts it (forwaring the server/service at <local destination url>) and adds a new DNS record for a new subdomain, that handles this tunnel

You can bind a single tunnel to multiple subdomains, just make sure to include all those "hostnames" inside the config file, else you get a 404

Using a configuration file

1. Create the tunnel like above
   • Make sure to take note of the tunnel's generated UUID (and possibly the path to the tunnel’s credentials file)
2. Create the config file:

   tunnel: <tunnel id>
   credentials-file: /root/.cloudflared/<tunnel id>.json # also shown during tunnel creation
   
   ingress:
     - hostname: <tunnel subdomain to use>.<domain>
       service: <local destination url> # e.g. http://localhost:80
     - service: http_status:404 # fallback catchall 404 (required)

   • I like to use a single tunnel for all my connections (tunnels use multiple connections for redundency) and place the config file in /etc/cloudflared/config.yaml on linux
3. Start the tunnel, using the config file:

   $ cloudflared tunnel --config <path to config file> run <tunnel name>

Create a temporary tunnel

$ cloudflared tunnel --hostname <tunnel subdomain to use>.<domain> --url <local destination url> --name <tunnel name>

This creates a tunnel, runs it, and adds the necessary DNS entries to your account.

Full Documentation & More Info

Check out the official docs at https://developers.cloudflare.com/cloudflare-one/connections/connect-apps/create-tunnel