Use Caddy instead of NGNIX as your reverse proxy

documentation sysadmin
1

Here are some notes about how I got my test Discourse instance running with Caddy Server.

Cool stuff about Caddy:

Cons:

  • Not as battle tested as apache, nginx and cia.

How To

Preparing Discourse

First, you need to apply this changes to your app.yml:

templates:
  - "templates/postgres.template.yml"
  - "templates/redis.template.yml"
  - "templates/web.template.yml"
  - "templates/web.ratelimited.template.yml"
  - "templates/web.socketed.template.yml" # <<<----- THIS IS NEW

## Let this two commented out
#  - "templates/web.ssl.template.yml"
#  - "templates/web.letsencrypt.ssl.template.yml"

## Let this two commented out 
expose:
#  - "8080:80"   # http
#  - "443:443" # https

env:
  ## This should be commented out too
  #LETSENCRYPT_ACCOUNT_EMAIL: mymail@gmail.com

Preparing Caddy

In the spirit of Discourse, let’s put Caddy in a Docker image too :whale2:

First prepare with:

mkdir /var/caddy
nano /var/caddy/Caddyfile

Add the following to the Caddyfile

forum.example.com # your domain here

proxy / unix:/sock/nginx.http.sock {
  transparent
}

Save and exit.

Let’s test

Now you need to rebuild Discourse:

/var/discourse
./launcher rebuild app

And then run Caddy:

docker run -d \
    -v /var/caddy/Caddyfile:/etc/Caddyfile \
    -v /var/caddy:/root/.caddy \
    -v /var/discourse/shared/standalone:/sock \
    -p 80:80 -p 443:443 \
    -p 80:80/udp -p 443:443/udp \
    --restart=always \
    --name caddy \
    --entrypoint "/usr/bin/caddy" \
    abiosoft/caddy -quic -email MYEMAILHERE@gmail.com -agree --conf /etc/Caddyfile --log stdout

After all, your forum should be avaliable at your domain, using SSL + HTTP2 + QUIC. You can’t more hipster than that.

19 Likes
2

I run Caddy’s Discourse forums with this Caddyfile and no container:

forum.caddyserver.com

timeouts off
proxy / localhost:8080 {
	transparent
}

I just set up Discourse (with one easy tweak) and ran Caddy on the host machine.

^ This setup has been tested, and I can confirm it has been running with no glitches for months.

9 Likes
3

I like how you’ve proxied to the socket and left the ports unexposed.

Neat little guide that one can use as a guideline to easily incorporate their Discourse installation to an existing Caddy proxy, too. Cheers!

3 Likes
4

But using nginx, as I can see now.

5

Well, I have more than 1 Discourse install with Caddy in the front, but I didn’t bother to replace the server header and it still shows nginx. Can be the same. Or they are just using the simple Discourse install and have no need to run a reverse proxy at all in the front.

1 Like
6

My Discourse sites behind Caddy show nginx as the server too. I guess that transparent setting might make Caddy, uh, transparent.

3 Likes
7

That might be a bug from a recent change, it didn’t used to do that. :thinking:

2 Likes
8

Dear @Falco

Thank you so much for your posting.

I would like to install discourse using caddy condition, but I was confused with your docker command.

I never heard about the caddy, so I follow the digital ocean document

My question is, in the current server situation, Should I change the path
from etc/Caddyfile to /etc/caddy/Caddyfile?

docker run -d \
    -v /var/caddy/Caddyfile:/etc/Caddyfile \
    -v /var/caddy:/root/.caddy \
    -v /var/discourse/shared/standalone:/sock \
    -p 80:80 -p 443:443 \
    -p 80:80/udp -p 443:443/udp \
    --restart=always \
    --name caddy \
    --entrypoint "/usr/local/bin/caddy" \
    abiosoft/caddy -quic -email MYEMAILHERE@gmail.com -agree --conf /etc/Caddyfile --log stdout

Sincerely

9

This not work on my server. For me, I used:

unix:/var/discourse/shared/standalone/nginx.http.sock

And this is for caddy v1. For caddy v2, please use:

unix//var/discourse/shared/standalone/nginx.http.sock

Just replace “:” to “/”.

1 Like
10

That path works if you are following the guide in the OP and running Caddy in docker and mounting the volumes as specified. If you are not following the guide, there will be different paths, yes.

3 Likes
12

Their forum domain and subdomain are now named under this.

1 Like
13

Sorry for bumping old threads, I’m trying to make Caddy work with Discourse. In your Caddy configuration, you use “proxy”, but when I use it, it says that there is a syntax error and that it’s not valid. Hasn’t “proxy” now been changed to “reverse_proxy”?

here’s my config:

forum.example.com {
    reverse_proxy / unix//var/discourse/shared/standalone/nginx.http.sock {
        transparent
    }
}
14

I think so. Did you try it?