NGINX

Using NGINX as a proxy for Home Assistant allows you to serve Home Assistant securely over standard ports. This configuration file and instructions will walk you through setting up Home Assistant over a secure connection.

1. Get a domain name forwarded to your IP

Chances are, you have a dynamic IP Address (your ISP changes your address periodically). If this is true, you can use a Dynamic DNS service to obtain a domain and set it up to update with you IP. If you purchase your own domain name, you will be able to easily get a trusted SSL certificate later.

2 Install nginx on your server

This will vary depending on your OS. Check out Google for this. After installing, ensure that NGINX is not running.

3. Obtain an SSL certificate

There are two ways of obtaining an SSL certificate.

Using Let’s Encrypt

If you purchased your own domain, you can use https://letsencrypt.org/ to obtain a free, publicly trusted SSL certificate. This will allow you to work with services like IFTTT. Download and install per the instructions online and get a certificate using the following command.

$ sudo ./letsencrypt-auto certonly --standalone -d example.com -d www.example.com

Instead of example.com, use your domain. You will need to renew this certificate every 90 days.

Using openssl

If you do not own your own domain, you may generate a self-signed certificate. This will not work with IFTTT, but it will encrypt all of your Home Assistant traffic.

$ openssl req -x509 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout key.pem -out cert.pem -days 9999
$ openssl rsa -in key.pem -out key.pem
$ sudo cp key.pem cert.pem /etc/nginx/ssl
$ sudo chmod 600 /etc/nginx/ssl/key.pem /etc/nginx/ssl/cert.pem
$ sudo chown root:root /etc/nginx/ssl/key.pem /etc/nginx/ssl/cert.pem

4. Create dhparams file

As a fair warning, this file will take a while to generate.

$ cd /etc/nginx/ssl
$ sudo openssl dhparam -out dhparams.pem 2048

5. Install configuration file in nginx.

Create a new file /etc/nginx/sites-available/hass and copy the configuration file at the bottom of the page into it.

Some Linux distributions (including CentOS and Fedora) will not have the /etc/nginx/sites-available/ directory. In this case, remove the default server {} block from the /etc/nginx/nginx.conf file and paste the contents from the bottom of the page in its place. If doing this, proceed to step 7.

6. Enable the Home Assistant configuration.

$ cd /etc/nginx/sites-enabled
$ sudo unlink default
$ sudo ln ../sites-available/hass default

7. Start NGINX.

Double check this configuration to ensure all settings are correct and start nginx.

8. Port forwarding.

Forward ports 443 and 80 to your server on your router. Do not forward port 8123.

NGINX Config

map $http_upgrade $connection_upgrade {
    default upgrade;
    ''      close;
}

server {
    # Update this line to be your domain
    server_name example.com;

    # These shouldn't need to be changed
    listen [::]:80 default_server ipv6only=off;
    return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}

server {
    # Update this line to be your domain
    server_name example.com;

    # Ensure these lines point to your SSL certificate and key
    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem;
    # Use these lines instead if you created a self-signed certificate
    # ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/cert.pem;
    # ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/key.pem;

    # Ensure this line points to your dhparams file
    ssl_dhparam /etc/nginx/ssl/dhparams.pem;


    # These shouldn't need to be changed
    listen [::]:443 default_server ipv6only=off; # if your nginx version is >= 1.9.5 you can also add the "http2" flag here
    add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000; includeSubdomains";
    ssl on;
    ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
    ssl_ciphers "EECDH+AESGCM:EDH+AESGCM:AES256+EECDH:AES256+EDH:!aNULL:!eNULL:!EXPORT:!DES:!MD5:!PSK:!RC4";
    ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
    ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:10m;

    proxy_buffering off;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:8123;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_redirect http:// https://;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection $connection_upgrade;
    }
}