Traefik Reverse Proxy

GitHub: ia-eknorr/traefik-reverse-proxy

Traefik is a lightweight reverse proxy that runs alongside your Docker stacks and gives each service a friendly local URL instead of a port number.

Without Traefik	With Traefik
http://localhost:8088	http://my-gateway.localtest.me
http://localhost:9088	http://other-gateway.localtest.me

When you are running multiple Ignition gateways locally (common in more advanced setups), managing port numbers gets messy fast. Traefik solves this by listening on port 80 and routing requests by hostname.

Required for the labs

The Docker Lab and Version Control Lab both reach the gateway at https://<GATEWAY_NAME>.localtest.me, which requires Traefik to route the hostname to the right container.

How It Works

*.localtest.me is a public wildcard DNS record that always resolves to 127.0.0.1 (your own machine). Traefik listens on port 80 and routes requests based on the hostname. Docker services opt in by adding a traefik.hostname label.

Setup

Traefik runs as its own Docker Compose stack, separate from your project stacks. Set it up once and leave it running.

1. Clone the Traefik repo into a utilities directory (not inside a project):

   mkdir -p ~/projects/utilities
   cd ~/projects/utilities
   git clone https://github.com/ia-eknorr/traefik-reverse-proxy.git traefik
   cd traefik

2. Start Traefik:

   docker compose up -d

   Traefik binds to port 80. If something else is using port 80, stop it first.

3. Verify Traefik is running:

   bash — ~/projects/utilities/traefik

   $ docker compose ps
   NAME       IMAGE            COMMAND                  SERVICE   CREATED        STATUS                   PORTS
   traefik    traefik:latest   "/entrypoint.sh --pr…"   traefik   3 seconds ago  Up 2 seconds (healthy)   0.0.0.0:80->80/tcp
   

   Then open http://proxy.localtest.me in your browser. You should see the Traefik dashboard.

Using Traefik with an Ignition Stack

Add these labels to your gateway service in docker-compose.yml:

services:
  gateway:
    labels:
      - traefik.enable=true
      - traefik.hostname=${GATEWAY_NAME}

With GATEWAY_NAME=my-gw in your .env, the gateway becomes accessible at http://my-gw.localtest.me.

Stopping Traefik

cd ~/projects/utilities/traefik
docker compose down

Traefik does not affect other running containers when stopped - they just lose their friendly URLs and fall back to direct port access.