Edit: Solution

Yeah, thanks to u/postnataldrip@lemmy.world I contacted my ISP and found out that in fact they were blocking my port forwarding capabilities. I gave them a call and I had to pay for a public IP address plan and now it’s just a matter of testing again. Thank you very much to everyone involved. I love you. It was Megacable by the way. If anyone from my country ever encounters the same problem I hope this post is useful to you.

Here’s the original post:

Hey!

Ok, so I’m trying to figure this internet thing out. I may be stupid, but I want to learn.

So, what I’m essentially doing is trying to host my own raw html website on my own hardware and get it out to the internet for everyone to see (temporarily of course, I don’t want to get in trouble with hackers and bots) I just want to cross that out of my bucket list.

What I’ve done so far:

  • I set up a qemu/kvm virtual machine with debian as my server
  • I configured a bridge so that it’s available to my local network
  • I got my raw html document
  • I’m serving it locally with nginx
  • I tried to set up port forwarding (I get stuck here)

Right now everyone in my home can see my ugly website if they go to 192.168.1.114:8080 (since I’m serving it through port 8080).

However, I want to be able to go outside (I’m testing it with my mobile network using mobile data) to see my website.

I’ve configured port forwarding on my ZTE router (ISP-issued) with the following parameters:

But now, if I search for my public IP address on my phone I don’t get anything. Even if I go to my.public.ip.address:8080 (did you think I was gon-give you my public ip?)

I don’t get anything. I’ve tried ping and curl. ping doesn´t even transmit the packages, curl says “Could not connect to server”.

So, If you guys would be so kind as to point me in the right direction, I pose the following questions :

  • How do I even diagnose this?
  • What am I missing?
  • Am I being too stupid?
  • What do I do now?

(Here’s a preview of my ugly website)

I also own a domain (with cloudflare) so, next step is getting that set-up with a DNS or something.

Thank youuuuuuu <3

  • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
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    6 days ago

    Glad you got it working, but you could have hosted it with a tor hidden service and not had to pay for a public IP address and shit.

    • KazuchijouNo@lemy.lolOP
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      6 days ago

      Cool! How do I go about setting this up? Right now I’m just looking for an equivalent to “launching my first satellite”. It might not be the most secure, and I may be paying more than I should, but I need the motivation, to know that I can and that I did. In the future I’ll be looking for a more sustainable and permanent solution, so I’d appreciate if you could share your arcane knowledge on this “tor hidden service”.

      • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
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        6 days ago

        You add the tor repo, install tor, edit /etc/tor/torrc with hidden service info, set the port as 8080 and systemctl restart tor. Then you get a hidden service address in like /var/lib/tor/hiddenservicename/hostname. It’s a long string ending with dot onion and once you have that you just put that into the tor browser.

        • KazuchijouNo@lemy.lolOP
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          6 days ago

          And with that I’ll be able to see my website anywhere I go? And it’ll technically “be in the darknet”? (or whatever it’s called)

          Sounds tempting, is it secure?

          • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
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            6 days ago

            Correct, it will be in the dark net. And it’s as secure as your web server. So I guess if your web server is set up in a very insecure manner, it would be very insecure as well. But since nobody would know the onion address besides you or anybody you give it to, it should be all right.

            • KazuchijouNo@lemy.lolOP
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              5 days ago

              Cool! security by obscurity! I might try it, just to get my website out there, but I don’t see it as a permanent solution

              • shortwavesurfer@lemmy.zip
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                5 days ago

                I mean, it’s obviously the only solution, right? You don’t have to pay for a domain name. You don’t have to pay for a hosted IP address. You don’t have to forward ports. You don’t have to do any of that shit. Plus, you’re on the darknet, and everything should be on the darknet. All the time.