How do you firewall PhotoStructure? -- to keep anyone on the internet from fiddling with it?

[ps23Rick]

So I’m new to PhotoStructure and I REALLY like it… but I was expecting it to have some sort of front-end to keep random internet people out of it that might stumble across it on the internet. I’m using the server version on a Khadas VIM4 at home.

I am not interested in having random people poking around through my photos if possible and that they can potentially shutdown the server altogether using the shutdown feature.

I’m sure I’m not the only one asking this question. If it were a desktop app on a machine, that’s one thing… Has anyone figured this out yet? How to lock people out of it – even if it’s a separate front end thingie?

I really want to use this but this lack of keeping out random users is a deal breaker for me. I hope that I’m just missing something… Thanks in advance!

[ps23Rick]

ok… I just ran across this link:

Remote Access

Sounds like it might work… I’ll have to try it though…

If you google the phrase “Authentication for multiple apps behind a reverse proxy”, you’ll find a guys’ site in France that has a pretty good write-up on this topic that’s pretty on-target for this sort of thing. Consider my question answered.

[avdp]

There are quite a few solutions to this, many of them discussed on this forum. They all involve some sort of reverse proxy (traefik, nginx, caddy) with or without cloudflare tunnel on top of it.

I personally use traefik to proxy all my docker container (including photostructure). I use a cloudflare tunnel to proxy the traefik endpoints to the internet.

It’s a bit technical… This thread has a lot of details, including a couple of youtube videos on how to do it.

Now @mrm is planning to implement authentication in photostructure. But even when it’s there I would still opt for reverse proxy and cloudflare because I don’t really want to open ports on my firewall.

Using Cloudflare tunnel with PhotoStructure

I just set this up yesterday. I was already hosting DNS for my domain with them (free). I setup a cloudflared container on my unraid to point to my traefik reverse proxy. This video was a great step by step to do this. (also free) Then I took it a step further, and setup cloudflare access with a Google as the authenticator, so all my apps are secured by my google account. (this too is free!) I didn’t follow a guide, but it’s pretty intuitive and cloudflare itself walks you through all t…

[nuk]

You found PhotoStructure | How do I access my PhotoStructure Library on other computers?, I’m glad! That was very helpful for me! I personally chose to set up Tailscale (a VPN) for access over the internet (WAN=connect over internet, LAN=connect just when at home, same as how wireless printers can be accessed only on home Wi-Fi but not over internet). I was surprised how easy it was to set up.

@ps23Rick

I was expecting it to have some sort of front-end to keep random internet people out of it that might stumble across it on the internet. I’m using the server version on a Khadas VIM4 at home

Did you try connecting over the internet? Unless you’ve messed with your Wi-Fi network router by opening ports or something else, no one can access your computers (including PhotoStructure) over the internet in general. PhotoStructure isn’t responsible for your network security, just like Windows File Explorer isn’t responsible for your network security. If random internet people can connect to your computer, you’re at risk regardless of PhotoStructure or anything else installed. Opening router ports is NOT secure, it’s best to set up a VPN or reverse proxy as in the article.