Best practices when running Node js with port 80 Ubuntu Linode

Question

I am setting up my first Node js server on a cloud Linux node and I am fairly new to the details of Linux admin   BTW I am not trying to use Apache at the same time     Everything is installed correctly  but I found that unless I use the root login  I am not able to listen on port 80 with node  However I would rather not run it as root for security reason    What is the best practice to    Set good permissions   user for node so that it is secure   sandboxed  Allow port 80 to be used within these constraints  Start up node and run it automatically  Handle log information sent to console  Any other general maintenance and security concerns    Should I be forwarding port 80 traffic to a different listening port   Thanks

User · Answer

For port 80  which was the original question   Daniel is exactly right   I recently moved to https and had to switch from iptables to a light nginx proxy managing the SSL certs  I found a useful answer along with a gist by gabrielhpugliese on how to handle that  Basically I   Created an SSL Certificate Signing Request  CSR  via OpenSSL  openssl genrsa 2048  gt  private-key pem openssl req -new -key private-key pem -out csr pem  Got the actual cert from one of these places  I happened to use Comodo  Installed nginx Changed the location in  etc nginx conf d example ssl conf to  location         proxy pass http   localhost 3000      proxy set header X-Real-IP  remote addr     Formatted the cert for nginx by cat-ing the individual certs together and linked to it in my nginx example ssl conf file  and uncommented stuff  got rid of  example  in the name       ssl certificate  etc nginx ssl cert bundle cert  ssl certificate key  etc nginx ssl private-key pem     Hopefully that can save someone else some headaches  I m sure there s a pure-node way of doing this  but nginx was quick and it worked

User · Answer

Drop root privileges after you bind to port 80  or 443    This allows port 80 443 to remain protected  while still preventing you from serving requests as root   function drop root         process setgid  nobody        process setuid  nobody        A full working example using the above function   var process   require  process    var http   require  http    var server   http createServer function req  res        res write  Success         res end         server listen 80  null  null  function         console log  User ID   process getuid      Group ID   process getgid         drop root        console log  User ID   process getuid      Group ID   process getgid           See more details at this full reference

User · Answer

Port 80 What I do on my cloud instances is I redirect port 80 to port 3000 with this command  sudo iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i eth0 -p tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-port 3000  Then I launch my Node js on port 3000  Requests to port 80 will get mapped to port 3000  You should also edit your  etc rc local file and add that line minus the sudo   That will add the redirect when the machine boots up  You don t need sudo in  etc rc local because the commands there are run as root when the system boots  Logs Use the forever module to launch your Node js with   It will make sure that it restarts if it ever crashes and it will redirect console logs to a file  Launch on Boot Add your Node js start script to the file you edited for port redirection   etc rc local   That will run your Node js launch script when the system starts  Digital Ocean  amp  other VPS This not only applies to Linode  but Digital Ocean  AWS EC2 and other VPS providers as well  However  on RedHat based systems  etc rc local is  ect rc d local

User · Answer

Give Safe User Permission To Use Port 80  Remember  we do NOT want to run your applications as the root user  but there is a hitch  your safe user does not have permission to use the default HTTP port  80   You goal is to be able to publish a website that visitors can use by navigating to an easy to use URL like http   ip port   Unfortunately  unless you sign on as root  you   ll normally have to use a URL like http   ip port - where port number   1024   A lot of people get stuck here  but the solution is easy  There a few options but this is the one I like  Type the following commands   sudo apt-get install libcap2-bin sudo setcap cap net bind service  ep  readlink -f   which node      Now  when you tell a Node application that you want it to run on port 80  it will not complain   Check this reference link

[linux] Best practices when running Node.js with port 80 (Ubuntu / Linode)

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