Installing Traefik on MXLinux Latest

In this tutorial, we will go through the steps to install Traefik, a modern and dynamic reverse proxy/load balancer, on MXLinux Latest.

Prerequisites

Before we begin, make sure you have the following:

• A sudo user account on MXLinux
• Docker and Docker Compose installed on your MXLinux instance
• Basic knowledge of Docker and Docker Compose

Step 1 - Download the Traefik Configuration

First, let's download the Traefik configuration files from the official Traefik GitHub repository. You can accomplish this by running the following command:

$ git clone https://github.com/containous/traefik.git

This will create a local copy of the Traefik repo on your machine.

Step 2 - Create a Network & Certificates

Now that we have the configuration files, we need to create a network and a certificate. These steps are necessary for Traefik to properly function.

$ docker network create web
$ cd traefik/examples/kv
$ openssl req -newkey rsa:2048 -nodes -keyout tls.key -x509 -days 365 -out tls.crt

This creates a Docker network called "web" and generates the required SSL certificates for Traefik.

Step 3 - Configure Docker Compose

Next, we will create a Docker Compose file to configure Traefik. Create a new file called "docker-compose.yml" in the "traefik" directory, and copy the following contents into it:

version: '3'

services:
   traefik:
     image: traefik:v2.5
     container_name: traefik
     command:
       - "--api.insecure=true"
       - "--providers.docker=true"
       - "--providers.docker.exposedbydefault=false"
       - "--entrypoints.websecure.address=:443"
       - "--certificatesresolvers.mytlschallenge.acme.tlschallenge=true"
       - "--certificatesresolvers.mytlschallenge.acme.email=your-email@example.com"
       - "--certificatesresolvers.mytlschallenge.acme.storage=/letsencrypt/acme.json"
     ports:
       - "80:80"
       - "443:443"
     volumes:
       - "./examples/kv/tls.crt:/letsencrypt/tls.crt"
       - "./examples/kv/tls.key:/letsencrypt/tls.key"
       - "./examples/kv/acme.json:/letsencrypt/acme.json"
       - "/var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro"
     networks:
       - web

networks:
  web:
    external: true

This Compose file sets up Traefik to use Docker provider, and exposes ports 80 and 443 required for HTTP and HTTPS traffic over the internet. The file also maps the SSL certificate files created in the previous step.

Note: Be sure to replace your-email@example.com with your actual email address.

Step 4 - Start Traefik

With everything in place, start Traefik by running the following command:

$ docker-compose up -d

This will start Traefik as a daemon in the background.

Step 5 - Test Traefik

To test if Traefik is working correctly, create a simple "whoami" Docker container with the following command:

$ docker run -d --name whoami -p 80:80 containous/whoami

Open up a web browser to http://localhost/ to see the "whoami" Docker container's output. You should be able to see the container's name, IP address, and other information.

Now, try accessing https://localhost/ to see the HTTPS version of the same page.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we have successfully installed Traefik on MXLinux Latest, configured it to use Docker as a provider, and tested its ability to handle HTTP and HTTPS traffic. You can now use Traefik to manage your HTTP/HTTPS workloads with ease.

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