I’ve been looking for an ngrok alternative for a while now that’s (a) affordable (b) easy to use and (c) works with Kitten¹. Today, after testing a bunch of them again and getting fed up, I found LocalXpose that checks all the boxes.
I signed Small Technology Foundation up as an affiliate so if you use this link to check it out, we’ll get 40% of your $6/mo pro account fee should you subscribe:
…Before this, I had set up a tiny VPS server that I installed WireGuard on that I was using to expose my dev server. It was a geeky exercise in setting up WireGuard, NAT/port-forwarding, etc. and it worked but with notable downsides:
• I could only use it from one computer at a time
• It meant my machine was removed from the local network so I couldn’t, for example, also control my Atem Mini Pro for streaming/recording.
LocalXpose doesn’t suffer from either issue.
PS. I’ve now added this to the Kitten readme but if you are using LocalXpose to expose your Kitten server to the world, start it up like this, replacing <your domain> with, well, your domain:
loclx tunnel http --reserved-domain <your domain> --https-to localhost:443 --to localhost:80 --region eu
And then start Kitten up from your project folder with:
kitten --domain=<your domain>
(And remember this is just for exposing your dev server. You can also deploy to a public VPS, etc., with Kitten.)
@aral check out Tailscale. They basically provide a managed WireGuard setup and they have a decent free plan.
@ThePaulMcBride Thanks for the pointer but, again, I don’t want to change my computer’s network so a VPN-based solution doesn’t help. (Otherwise I have my own VPS server setup with WireGuard where I can do – and was doing – the same thing.) :)
@aral not 100% sure what you mean by change your computers network, but it can be ran in a docker container too, so can be fairly isolated.
@ThePaulMcBride I mean when I connected to the WireGuard server, I lost the ability to reach my local network (e.g., to find and control the Atem Mini Pro on my local network). Granted, this might very well have been a misconfiguration on my part but part of it is I really need something that works without my having to mess with NAT/port forwarding, etc.
@aral @ThePaulMcBride Just for clarity this isn’t a problem with tailscale. The only traffic that traverses over the tailscale vpn is to your other tailscale nodes. You can use tailscale funnel to expose a service on a node to the public internet but that isn’t part of the free plan and i don’t use that. I use it for connecting to my kubefirst lab box from my work laptop wherever i am in the world. wholly transparent, wholly secure
@potatogunkelly @aral @ThePaulMcBride Tailscale Funnel is available on the free plan, it's just not listed on the pricing page.
@climatepenguin @aral @ThePaulMcBride Ah, handy to know! Cheers!
@aral
As a side note, Headscale + @tailscale work really well for an internal network under all circumstances, with emphasis on all.
@aral > It meant my machine was removed from the local network
That sounds weird, i can still access my local network while my WireGuard is active. Maybe some routing priority setting was wrong?
(just checked again, am connected to a WireGuard, and can still access my home server just fine)
@4censord Hmm, odd. Maybe it was a configuration issue on my end. But that’s part of it, I really don’t want to worry about all that. Especially, say, on my laptop when I’m at some conference venue and giving a talk where I want folks in the audience to be able to connect to my machine so we can all play with whatever it is I’m building/demonstrating :)
@aral you can set up wg on multiple pc - having wg inf does not affect local connectivity - wg is leader of open source vpn tech - why are you trying to sell everything - be geeky and sell only really exceptional stuff
@gary_alderson I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m talking about the experience I had and what works for me. And if you’re criticising an affiliate link for a $6/mo subscription, 40% of which would benefit our not-for-profit that’s been struggling to exist for the last however many years because everything we do is free and open source and we haven’t got any funding well… I mean… I guess we should just die, eh?