Has anyone tried this for a free ngrok alternative that works with HTTPS, doesn't require setting up a server and has no rate limit within reason? https://developers.cloudflare.com/pages/how-to/preview-with-...

Based on the page it looks like you can install Cloudflare's CLI and then run `cloudflared tunnel --url http://localhost:3000`, and you'll get back a URL to visit such as https://seasonal-deck-organisms-sf.trycloudflare.com. Looks like it supports being able to associate it with a custom domain too so you can have repeatable URLs.

> This is intended for small teams that need to expose the local development environment to the public internet

As someone who has to manage enterprise firewalls, this is a nightmare from a security perspective. I’m more than happy to host some project in a DMZ. I have already had some devs skirt our security policies with ngrok rather than simply talk to us about their needs. I can’t say I’m a fan of punching permanent holes into a firewall like this.

We’ve used https://github.com/antoniomika/sish quite successfully. It‘s very easy to setup with docker compose and even supports letsencrypt wildcard certificates.

I find it quite amusing that I read the pgrok and ngrok websites (at least the front page) and cannot understand what the hell either of them do.

It's like they can do almost anything...what exactly? .... well whatever you can think of.....er like what?

You can open localhost to the internet.......?????????? Sorry?

Anyhow if anyone would care to put me out of my misery by explaining a bit I'd be grateful.

Don’t think I’ve ever seen an alternative to ngrok that includes their “Inspection Interface” - that is such a useful feature for debugging.

Why do projects that are meant to be lightweight use Postgres instead of SQLite? The latter is much easier to deploy (you, well, just don't need to), and does 99% of what anyone needs, and definitely 100% of what small projects need.

A multi-tenant HTTP reverse tunnel solution through SSH remote port forwarding.

I don’t see a usecase where a non dev should expose some local resource to the internet. These people don’t run local webservers, nor know how they work.

ngrok is a developer tool. I don’t see why marketing a dev tool to non devs is a good idea, maybe somebody can explain?

By the sounds of it Ngroks pricing is out of control. They used to allow commerical use for individual developer subscriptions, why not now?

I recently launched Tunnelmole, an open source alternative. You can just run the client and then you don't need to worry about NAT/CG-NAT, port forwarding or running your own server unless you want to self host, which is possible because the service layer is also open source.

You can get it from https://github.com/robbie-cahill/tunnelmole-client

Since I don't need a lot of HTTPS development servers, but the few that I do need, need to have a fixed domain name, I simply configured nginx on one of our servers (not the production server, of course) to proxy to a localhost port and then do a SSH tunnel to that server and port from my development PC. Good enough for what I do. Though I should look into auto-ssh some day, because the SSH tunnel keeps dyeing.

Also check out https://docs.border0.com/docs. Super easy to get going, and supports HTTP(s), SSH and Database protocols such as mysql and postgres. Ideal for private resources, as it has a nice policy to control who should have access to what, when and where. Finally you can use Google and Github for authentication.

I was under the impression that pgrok was unmaintained until now, to the extend that I was looking for alternatives. Did I miss something?

I recently wrote about how ngrok-like functionality is easily implemented in Go via SSH port forwarding: https://eli.thegreenplace.net/2022/ssh-port-forwarding-with-...

I love seeing alternatives but one thing I really appreciate about ngrok is the web UI. The log of incoming requests, headers and payloads, is very helpful during development. Do any of these alternatives offer something similar? Or is there an additional tool that can be leveraged?

Great thing about k8s: you can expose all your dev env needs super fast and easy.

And adding a dex or so upfront is also super easy.

If you are a small company and need this regularly try to take a look at managed k8s.

It will be worth it

In a couple places grok is typoed as gork

if you're already running nginx on a server somewhere, you can set up a subdomain to tunnel to localhost with no software to install. just a tiny bit of config. use just ssh on the client. i only use it to test callbacks but it can be shared too

I understand your perspective, it's absolutely right to insist on security in a corporate environment. I have also seen the other side as a developer and saw it happen a number of times. Understanding why it seems tempting to developers is probably the best way to fully get rid of it (although you might be doing so already, probably no way to fully get rid of the problem). The reasons I've seen usually were:

- Undocumented or unknown processes. Many enterprises have a discoverability problem regarding almost all information, and as somebody that frequently required some special support for my work, it often took shockingly long to find a person who knew how to find the information in the respective intranet. It's important that not only are the services available, they also must be discoverable and known.

- Complicated processes. A portion of developers that require these services are using them for the first time, or have used them without fully understanding and considering the implications. If the process for requesting support is too complicated (e.g. requiring a form where you either require very detailed information without assistance on how to find it, or - the worst case - a form with fields where the people responsible say "oh, just fill it with random stuff to keep going") it will make some people choose the less secure way to get going with work.

- Long processes. If a developer wants to use such a service and it takes weeks to months to receive support (e.g. overload of tickets, or the only person responsible is on vacation) it sometimes leaves little to no choice.

But again, definitely not advocating for circumventing security!

Not exactly sure how streamlined your security process is, but for some orgs it is a red tape roller coaster to even get one TCP port open.

Anyways, you could also block all traffic to ngrok servers just to ensure your Dev teams aren't skirting around your firewall.

> > This is intended for small teams

> As someone who has to manage enterprise firewalls

Clearly not intended for you, as the quoted part tells you outright who it is intended for.

Like everything in life, "it depends."

If what you need can suffice with SQLite, then Postgres will work too.

If you're running an app on a VM, running Postgres on it too is easy and isn't "big". It's easy to install and set up, and you're set up for all the features you may want later. Plus you avoid having to refactor for a different database later on.

If you're running your app in a serverless context, or on a PaaS/SaaS, etc, then SQLite might be easier. But maybe you want horizontal scalability with a shared dataset and then you're back at Postgres.

Just picking one thing "because everybody does" or "because it's lightweight" or "it works in most cases" etc aren't good reasons to pick technology. Look at your actual application, make a list of pros and cons, and choose based on your situation, not the cargo cult answer from the HN hive mind.

I use Postgres in my personal projects because I have a server (with backups etc.) running anyway. Since this project also has OIDC authentication, I imagine the target audience may already be running a PG server?

Going by https://github.com/pgrok/pgrok/blob/main/internal/database/d... I don't think adding SQLite support should be that difficult. The ORM used (gorm) has SQLite support already.

Edit: this seems to be intentional to keep maintenance cost down: https://github.com/pgrok/pgrok/pull/11

Cargo culting. If you never used SQLite, anytime you need a database you use whatever you've used before without shopping around or considering if what you're about to use is right.

It looks like this may be a great place to use SQLite instead of Postgres because of the requirement to run this on a single server.

Small projects can still need to expand beyond a single server or have zero-downtime deploys.