How to install Inlets on MXLinux Latest

Inlets is an open-source cloud-native tunneling system used to securely expose internal endpoints to the outside world. In this guide, we will show you how to install inlets on MXLinux Latest.

Prerequisites

• A running instance of MXLinux Latest
• Basic knowledge of working with the command line

Step 1 — Installing Inletsink

Inlets works by transmitting traffic from a client to a cloud-hosted server over HTTPS, and then proxying it on to the target server. We'll need to set up two separate components: the client, called inlets and the server, called inlets-pro.

Let's start by installing inlets on your MXLinux Latest.

1. Open up a terminal window by pressing Ctrl + Alt + T on your keyboard, or by searching the terminal on the application menu.

2. Once you have opened the terminal, update apt-get by typing the following command in the terminal:

sudo apt-get update -y

3. Once the update process finishes, install curl by typing the following command:

sudo apt-get install curl -y

4. Once curl is installed on your system, you can install inlets by running the following command on your terminal:

curl -LSs https://get.inlets.dev | sh

This command downloads and installs the latest version of inlets from the inlets.dev website. Once the installation is complete, you should have inlets installed on your system. You can check its version by typing the following command in the terminal:

inlets version

You should see the version number of inlets installed on your system.

Step 2 — Install Inletsserver

Next, let's install inlets-pro, which is the server component required to create a secure tunnel to your internal network.

1. Open up a terminal window.

2. Once the terminal is open, update apt-get by typing the following command in the terminal:

sudo apt-get update -y

3. Once the update process finishes, install curl by typing the following command:

sudo apt-get install curl -y

4. Once curl is installed on your system, you can install inlets-pro by running the following command on your terminal:

curl -SLsf https://inletsctl.inlets.dev/ | sudo sh

This command downloads and installs the latest version of inlets-pro from the inlets.dev website. Once the installation is complete, you should have inlets-pro installed on your system. You can check its version by typing the following command in the terminal:

inlets-pro version

You should see the version number of inlets-pro installed on your system.

Step 3 — Running the Inlets server

To use inlets, we first need to start a server component to create a tunnel to our network.

1. Open up a terminal window.

2. Once the terminal is open, navigate to the directory where you have installed inlets-pro. Usually, it can be found at /usr/local/bin/inlets-pro.

cd /usr/local/bin/inlets-pro

3. Next, start the inlets server by running the following command:

inlets-pro server \
    --auto-tls \
    --token-file ~/.inlets/pro-token \
    --port 8080 \
    --tcp-ports 22 \
    --tcp-ports 80 \
    --tcp-ports 443

This command starts the inlets-pro server with auto-tls enabled, which automatically configures secure HTTPS connections using Let’s Encrypt's certificate authority. We have also specified the port number and the TCP ports that we want to tunnel through the server.

Once the inlets-pro server is running, you should see the log output similar to the following:

INFO[0000] Starting server version: 0.8.12
INFO[0000] Server is starting                        port=8080

Step 4 — Running the Inlets client

1. Open up a terminal window.

2. Once the terminal is open, navigate to the directory where you have installed inlets. Usually, it can be found at /usr/local/bin/inlets.

cd /usr/local/bin/inlets

3. Next, start the inlets client by running the following command:

inlets client \
     --url wss://SERVER-IP:8080 \
     --token-file ~/.inlets/token \
     --remote tcp://127.0.0.1:22=http://localhost:22 \
     --remote tcp://127.0.0.1:80=http://localhost:80 \
     --remote tcp://127.0.0.1:443=http://localhost:443

Note that you need to replace SERVER-IP with the actual IP address of the Inlets server.

This command starts the inlets client with the specified remote endpoints to tunnel to, which are specified using the --remote option.

Once the inlets client is running, you should see the log output similar to the following:

INFO[0000] Starting client version: 0.8.12
INFO[0000] License not found                         file=$HOME/.inlets/pro-license
INFO[0000] Control plane is running                  url=wss://SERVER-IP:8080
INFO[0000] Tunnel established                        active=true id=4d4f0b2e0e09 port=22 protocol=tcp
INFO[0000] Tunnel established                        active=true id=68f0a0811da8 port=80 protocol=tcp
INFO[0000] Tunnel established                        active=true id=cc44806305f2 port=443 protocol=tcp

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we have shown you how to install and configure inlets and inlets-pro on an MXLinux Latest machine. You can now use inlets to expose your internal endpoints to the outside world.

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