local-ip.sh

local-ip.sh is a magic domain name that provides wildcard DNS for any IP address. It is heavily inspired by local-ip.co, sslip.io, and xip.io

How it works

local-ip.sh packs up:

• an authoritative DNS server that answers queries for the zone local-ip.sh
• a Let's Encrypt client that takes care of obtaining and renewing the wildcard certificate for *.local-ip.sh and the root certificate for local-ip.sh using the DNS-01 challenge
• an HTTP server that serves the website and the wildcard certificate files

It answers queries with the IPv4 address it may find in the subdomain by pattern matching the FQDN. It registers an account to Let's Encrypt's ACME server to obtain the wildcard certificate on the first run and then renew it about a month before it expires. The account file and the associated key used to request a certificate under the ./.lego/accounts directory and the certificate's files are stored in ./.lego/certs. It also obtains a separate certificate for the root domain to serve the website through HTTPS. It initially serves the website through HTTP and when the root domain certificate is ready, it redirects all HTTP requests to HTTPS.

Usage

go run ./main.go --staging --dns-port 9053 --http-port 9080 --https-port 9443 --domain local-ip.sh --email admin@fake.sh --nameservers 137.66.40.11,137.66.40.12

dig @localhost -p 9053 10-0-1-29.local-ip.sh +short
# 10.0.1.29
dig @localhost -p 9053 app.10-0-1-29.local-ip.sh +short
# 10.0.1.29
dig @localhost -p 9053 foo.bar.10.0.1.29.local-ip.sh +short
# 10.0.1.29
dig @localhost -p 9053 127.0.0.1.local-ip.sh +short
# 127.0.0.1

Configuration

local-ip.sh can be configured through environment variables or CLI flags

• XIP_DNS_PORT or --dns-port optional, port for the DNS server, defaults to 53.
• XIP_HTTP_PORT or --http-port optional, port for the HTTP server, defaults to 80.
• XIP_HTTPS_PORT or --https-port optional, port for the HTTPS server, defaults to 443.
• XIP_STAGING or --staging optional, enable to use Let's Encrypt staging environment to obtain certificates, defaults to false.
• XIP_DOMAIN or --domain required, domain name of the server hosting this. It will be used as the zone to answer dns queries for.
• XIP_EMAIL or --email required, administrator's email address, used to create the ACME account to request certificates from Let's Encrypt and as the RNAME value of the SOA record representing the domain administrator's email address.
• XIP_NAMESERVERS or --nameservers required, comma-separated IPv4 addresses used to answer A queries for nsX.{domain} where X is the index of the address in this list. For example setting --domain example.com --nameservers 1.2.3.4,9.8.7.6 will answer 1.2.3.4 for ns1.example.com and 9.8.7.6 for ns2.example.com. All nsX.{domain} nameservers will be in the answer for NS queries to the zone.

A reference docker compose file is available for deployments using Docker.

Self-hosting

I'm currently hosting local-ip.sh at Fly.io but you can host the service yourself if you're into that kind of thing. Note that you will need to edit your domain's glue records so make sure your registrar allows it.

You will essentially need to:

• set your domain's glue records to point to the IP addresses you will set for XIP_NAMESERVERS / --nameservers
• configure local-ip.sh with the domain, admin email address, and nameservers
• ensure you have some sort of persistent storage for the ./.lego directory, this is where the ACME account and certificate files are stored, you don't want to lose this between deployments