caddy-docker VS cloudflare

The official Caddy documentation of their Docker image: https://hub.docker.com/_/caddy

I use https://static-web-server.net/

Cross-platform, written in Rust, straightforward configuration, secure defaults, also has a hardened container image and a hardened NixOS module.

I wouldn't recommend Caddy. Their official docker image runs as root unnecessarily (and the reasoning suggests a lack of understanding) [1], and they don't provide a properly sandboxed systemd unit file [2].

[1]: https://github.com/caddyserver/caddy-docker/issues/104

There is also a short section about it on the Docker hub page under the "Adding custom Caddy modules" section: https://hub.docker.com/_/caddy

Caddy uses a number of volumes. Two point directly at files within our project, first our Caddyfile, then our public folder which Caddy will serve live files. The other two are virtual filesystems Docker will create as defined by the master volumes parameters. We can assume the caddy_config volume is where active configuration is stored as it is not discussed on the Caddy Docker Official Image page, so we're copying their parameter exactly, but the caddy_data volume needs some extra discussion. It is used to store a number of things including SSL certificates. By default Docker creates and destroys volumes upon startup and exit. As we want to persist our certificate across sessions we can take advantage of an external Docker volume. These virtual filesystems are created before starting the Docker session for the first time. This can ve done from the command line or more easily from within the Docker Desktop app. Simply choose "Volumes", click the "Create" button and specify caddy_data.

I've been able to create a network with no issues (that I know of yet) but when I try to create the volumes I run into trouble. This specific example is from Caddy2...

For a reverse proxy I would suggest Caddy. The configuration is super easy and it handles SSL for you out of the box using LetsEncrypt! There’s also an official docker image like PHP and MySQL here https://hub.docker.com/_/caddy

Their image is dead simple to use, the config is fine, and auto-https is baked in. You can use it as a sidecar, proxy for multiple images, or just as a base to add your app into, depending on the complexity of your existing config.

If you're using Cloudflare then you might need the Cloudflare module which is a little annoying because you need to rebuild the Caddy executable (or Docker image) to include it. I just set up a GitHub repo that uses GitHub Actions to build and publish a Docker image that includes the Caddy Docker Proxy and Cloudflare modules, but I haven't figured out how automatically update the image when a new version of Caddy is released so it's still a manual process for now.

if domain.xyz is already pointed to cloudflare's nameservers, you'll want to use the cloudflare dns plugin with caddy for a wildcard tls cert from letsencrypt.

I'm on Cloudflare now, so I build my own image based on this Docker image to use SSL from Cloudflare.

Anyways, my end goal is to use cloudflare aswell, because I see that then you can get a wildcard DNS record. Have you tried that? Are you using https://github.com/caddy-dns/cloudflare ? Did you have to build it yourself, or is it included in dockerhub image?

> First, what versions am I getting? Does using `2.5.1-builder` result in a customer built binary that's version `2.5.1`? The command usage [1] of the `xcaddy` command says it falls back to the `CADDY_VERSION` environment variable if it's not set explicitly. Since it's not set explicitly, I go looking for that variable in the Dockerfile [2].

Yeah - the default version it'll build with is the version embedded in the builder image, so in that case, v2.5.1. But really, you can just use always use the latest builder image and specify the version you want in the xcaddy command, i.e. 'xcaddy build v2.5.1 --with ', or any other git ref if not a version (cause we're using Go to build and you can use any git ref, like a commit hash or branch name if you want to try a WIP pull request).

We set it up with a good default so most users wouldn't need to ask that question, it should "just work" for them. But it's a valid question to ask.

> That's some templating language I'm not familiar with and I can't track down where the variable gets set, at least not quickly.

Yeah we're using Gomplate for generating the Dockerfiles for the official Docker Library builds, since we need to make builds for every CPU architecture, and even Windows docker images (I still have no idea why anyone would want those, but alas). Either way, that's an implementation detail of how we automate this stuff, doesn't matter to users.

> Now, what version of `caddy-dns/cloudflare` am I getting?

The latest, if you don't specify a version. The https://github.com/caddy-dns/cloudflare repo doesn't have tagged releases, so it'll just be the latest commit on the master branch. You can specify a specific commit like '--with github.com/caddy-dns/cloudflare@8ea1cff' for (as of this writing) the commit just before the latest.

> What other risks come along with building and maintaining my own custom image?

Honestly, none. Maybe problems with plugins not being compatible with eachother, but Caddy's plugin design means that should rarely happen, except if two plugins have the same module ID. But that's up to you to make sure you don't pick two plugins that try to do the same thing.

Because of the way Go builds work, they can always be cross-compiled. We don't use CGO, so builds of Caddy are completely static and have zero dependencies. There's really no risk that it doesn't build in a specific environment, or whatever.

> If I build a custom image, do I let other people I help with the odd tech thing use it or is all the effort for me only? I don't want to become the maintainer of a Docker image others rely on, so I can't even re-use any related config if I help others in the future since they won't have access to the needed image.

Up to you. But that's the exact reason we don't maintain builds with plugins ourselves. There's literally an infinite amount of combinations possible. Some have suggested like "caddy-lite" and "caddy-full" sort of setups where we ship just a few vetted plugins or "yolo give me all the plugins" but that's silly. We don't have the time or resources to vet all the plugins.

From your perspective it might seem like "duh, there should be an official build with Cloudflare", but really it's a pretty small percentage of users who need this.

> Also, a 4 line Docker file looks nice in terms of being simple, but explicitly declaring or even adding comments describing some of the things I pointed out above can save people a lot of time. Even comments with links to the relevant portions of the docs would be super useful.

(as I wrote in my other comment, the docs for this are on https://hub.docker.com/_/caddy)

> The desire for wildcard certificates is to keep things from being discoverable via CTLogs.

It's really trivial for someone to scan until they hit subdomains that return a successful response, if they really cared. This doesn't really protect from anything. Using wildcards for that is a bit of an antipattern.

For more, see: https://github.com/caddy-dns/cloudflare

As default it does need port 80 open to renew certificates, but you can use DNS challenge instead. https://github.com/caddy-dns/cloudflare