{"id":1998,"date":"2020-03-09T20:00:18","date_gmt":"2020-03-09T12:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.techcoil.com\/blog\/?p=1998"},"modified":"2021-04-24T23:40:03","modified_gmt":"2021-04-24T15:40:03","slug":"how-to-put-your-raspberry-pi-server-on-the-internet-with-ngrok","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.techcoil.com\/blog\/how-to-put-your-raspberry-pi-server-on-the-internet-with-ngrok\/","title":{"rendered":"How to put your Raspberry Pi server on the internet with ngrok"},"content":{"rendered":"

As I had mentioned in how to host multiple websites from home<\/a>, a typical network architecture looks like the following:
\n\"Home In such a case, we will need our router to hold a public IP address and perform port forwarding for our home servers.<\/p>\n

However, there can be cases where we do not have the environment to put our server on the internet. <\/p>\n

In such a situation, you will find ngrok<\/a> useful. Since ngrok accepts traffic on a public address and relays that traffic through to the ngrok process running on your machine, you can put your server on the internet easily.
\n\"ngrok<\/p>\n

Given that, let's look at how you can put your Raspberry Pi server<\/a> on the internet with ngrok.<\/p>\n

Create an account with ngrok<\/h2>\n

First of all, you will need an account with ngrok so that your Raspberry Pi is able to identify itself with ngrok. Therefore, proceed to create an account with ngrok<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Setup your Raspberry Pi server<\/h2>\n

Once you have an account with ngrok, you are ready to use ngrok to put your Raspberry Pi server on the internet. <\/p>\n

If you have not done so, then you may want to setup your Raspbery Pi server. For example, you can setup Raspbian Buster Lite on your Raspberry Pi<\/a> as the operating system to run your server applications.<\/p>\n

For the purpose of this tutorial, let's assume that we want to host a static website on our Raspberry Pi<\/a> and make it available on the Internet with ngrok. <\/p>\n

In order to keep things simple, we will make use of the default Nginx configurations<\/a> to serve some static content from the \/var\/www\/html\/<\/code> directory.<\/p>\n

For example, if your Raspberry Pi IP is 192.168.1.114<\/strong>, you should be able to retrieve \/var\/www\/html\/index.html via http:\/\/192.168.1.114\/<\/strong> on your web browser.
\n\"Chrome<\/p>\n

Downloading the ngrok client program on your Raspberry Pi<\/h2>\n

When you have a HTTP server<\/a> listening for incoming HTTP requests<\/a> on your Raspberry Pi, you can install the ngrok client.<\/p>\n

In order to do so, run the following command on a terminal program on your Raspberry Pi:<\/p>\n

\r\ncd ~\r\nwget https:\/\/bin.equinox.io\/c\/4VmDzA7iaHb\/ngrok-stable-linux-arm.tgz\r\ntar -xvzf ngrok-stable-linux-arm.tgz\r\n<\/pre>\n
When the above command completes, you can verify your download with the following command:<\/p>\n
\r\n.\/ngrok help\r\n<\/pre>\n
If ngrok client had downloaded successfully, then you should find instructions on how to use the ngrok client in the output.<\/p>\n
Authenticate your Raspberry Pi with ngrok<\/h2>\n
At this point in time, you are ready to authenticate your Raspberry Pi with ngrok.<\/p>\n
In order to do so, login to the ngrok dashboard<\/a>. When you have logged in successfully, navigate to the Auth page<\/a> to get your Tunnel Authtoken.
\n\"ngrok<\/p>\n
As shown above, the Auth page will show the command to authenticate your Raspberry Pi with ngrok:<\/p>\n
\r\n.\/ngrok authtoken 1YkSVonpCzVJrPyIBZTAF4DGSsj_4UD755hEaVcFJh66tnLkh\r\n<\/pre>\n
When the command completes, you should see an output similar to the following:<\/p>\n
\r\nAuthtoken saved to configuration file: \/home\/pi\/.ngrok2\/ngrok.yml\r\n<\/pre>\n
Running the ngrok client program to put your Raspberry Pi server on the internet<\/h2>\n
At this point in time, you will be able to put your Raspberry Pi server on the internet by running the following command:<\/p>\n
\r\n.\/ngrok https -bind-tls=true 80\r\n<\/pre>\n
When you do so, the terminal will produce an output similar to the following:<\/p>\n
\r\nngrok by @inconshreveable                                       (Ctrl+C to quit)\r\n                                                                                \r\nSession Status                online                                            \r\nAccount                       youremailaddress@gmail.com (Plan: Free)                    \r\nVersion                       2.3.35                                            \r\nRegion                        United States (us)                                \r\nWeb Interface                 http:\/\/127.0.0.1:4040                             \r\nForwarding                    https:\/\/5114a8e6.ngrok.io -> http:\/\/localhost:80  \r\n                                                                                \r\nConnections                   ttl     opn     rt1     rt5     p50     p90       \r\n                              0       0       0.00    0.00    0.00    0.00  \r\n<\/pre>\n
Accessing your Raspberry Pi server application with the allocated ngrok domain name<\/h2>\n
Once you see the output, you can then access your Raspberry Pi server with the ngrok URL stated. For example, when I access https:\/\/5114a8e6.ngrok.io<\/strong>, I was able to see the web page that was served by my Raspberry Pi:
\n\"Accessing<\/p>\n
In addition to the command line output, you can also find the URL in the status page of your ngrok dashboard<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Running ngrok client as a daemon<\/h2>\n
If you want ngrok to put your Raspberry Pi server on the internet on boot, then you will need to run it as a daemon. <\/p>\n
In order to do so, we need to:<\/p>\n
    \n
  1. edit our ngrok.yml<\/code> file<\/li>\n
  2. create a system unit file for our ngrok client.<\/li>\n
  3. register the system unit file with systemd<\/code> and run the ngrok client as a daemon.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    Editing ngrok.yml<\/code><\/h3>\n
    First, use nano<\/code> to edit the ngrok.yml file that our ngrok client had created for us earlier:<\/p>\n
    \r\nsudo nano ~\/.ngrok2\/ngrok.yml\r\n<\/pre>\n
    When nano<\/code> starts, add the following content after the authtoken row<\/strong>:<\/p>\n
    \r\ntunnels:\r\n  nginx-server:\r\n    proto: http\r\n    addr: 80\r\n    bind-tls: true\r\n    console_ui: false\r\n<\/pre>\n
    After you had made the changes, press Ctrl-X<\/strong>, Y<\/strong> and Enter<\/strong>6 to save the file.<\/p>\n
    Creating a system unit file for our ngrok client<\/h3>\n
    Next, use nano<\/code> to create a system unit file for our ngrok client:<\/p>\n
    \r\nsudo nano \/etc\/systemd\/system\/ngrok-client.service\r\n<\/pre>\n
    When the nano<\/code> starts, copy the following directives into the editor:<\/p>\n
    \r\n[Unit]\r\nDescription=ngrok client\r\nAfter=network.target\r\n\r\n[Service]\r\nExecStart=\/home\/pi\/ngrok start --all -config \/home\/pi\/.ngrok2\/ngrok.yml\r\nRestart=on-abort\r\n\r\n[Install]\r\nWantedBy=multi-user.target\r\n<\/pre>\n
    After you had copied the directives to the editor, press Ctrl-X<\/strong>, Y<\/strong> and Enter<\/strong> to save the changes.<\/p>\n
    Registering the system unit file with systemd<\/code> and running the ngrok client as a daemon<\/h3>\n
    Once you had created the system unit file, run the following commands to run the ngrok client as a daemon:<\/p>\n
    \r\nsudo systemctl daemon-reload\r\nsudo systemctl enable ngrok-client\r\nsudo systemctl start ngrok-client\r\n<\/pre>\n
    After you have registered ngrok<\/code> client to run as a daemon, you can check if it is running successfully with the following command:<\/p>\n
    \r\nsystemctl status ngrok-client.service\r\n<\/pre>\n
    If your ngrok<\/code> client is able to run successfully, then you should find output similar to the following:<\/p>\n
    \r\n\u25cf ngrok-client.service - ngrok client\r\n   Loaded: loaded (\/etc\/systemd\/system\/ngrok-client.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)\r\n   Active: active (running) since Mon 2020-03-09 17:43:55 +08; 8min ago\r\n Main PID: 8888 (ngrok)\r\n    Tasks: 13 (limit: 4915)\r\n   Memory: 5.9M\r\n   CGroup: \/system.slice\/ngrok-client.service\r\n           \u2514\u25008888 \/home\/pi\/ngrok start --all -config \/home\/pi\/.ngrok2\/ngrok.yml\r\n\r\nMar 09 19:43:55 raspberrypi systemd[1]: Started ngrok client.\r\n<\/pre>\n
    Given that, you can then head on to your ngrok status page<\/a> to find the URL to access your Raspberry Pi server.<\/p>\n
    \"How<\/p>\n\n