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:
Should I be forwarding port 80 traffic to a different listening port?
Thanks
This question is related to
linux
node.js
security
web-applications
configuration
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
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 > private-key.pem
openssl req -new -key private-key.pem -out csr.pem
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.
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.
Source: Stackoverflow.com