Setting up znc with a subdomain using NGINX

This post covers ubuntu/debian and systemd based operating systems. Although minor differences may exist, similar principle can be applied to other systems as well. Setting up znc on a linux machine is easy, and setting it up with a subdomain is easy as well! We will be using a standard znc installation and use certbot to generate SSL certificates.

Requirements

• znc
• nginx
• certbot

Installation

Install znc using any method explained on the main site.

If you are on ubuntu, you can install znc and nginx using

sudo apt install znc nginx certbot

Configuration

Once that is done, we need to create config file for znc. That can be done by

znc --makeconf

It will ask you multiple questions, here is how I answered them:

   Listen on port: 1025    
   Listen using SSL: yes    
   Listen using both IPv4 and IPv6: no    
   Username: your_username    
   Enter password: your_password     
   Confirm password: your_password            
   Nick: nick     
   Alternate nick: nick_    
   Real name: optional    
   Bind host:    
   Set up a network? no    
   Launch ZNC now? no    

At this point znc has created your config file at

$HOME/.znc/configs/znc.conf. Now we modify the config so that there are two listeners instead of one. (Note how one allows web interface while the other is for IRC, both on different ports.) You will use the first one to modify znc settings and the second one to access znc network via IRC.

<Listener listener0>
	AllowIRC = false
	AllowWeb = true
	IPv4 = true
	IPv6 = false
	Port = 31337
	SSL = true
	URIPrefix = /
</Listener>

<Listener listener1>
	AllowIRC = true
	AllowWeb = false
	IPv4 = true
	IPv6 = false
	Port = 1337
	SSL = true
	URIPrefix = /
</Listener>

You can start znc by simply entering znc.

Setting up reverse proxy

All that is left now is to configure nginx so that it will pass the subdomain requests to znc. Create the znc config file at /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/znc Make sure your DNS record for selected subdomain point to the IP of your host.

server {
	server_name znc.yourdomain.xyz;
	access_log  /var/log/nginx/znc-access.log;
	error_log   /var/log/nginx/znc-error.log;

	location / {
		proxy_pass https://127.0.0.1:31337/;
	}
}

After this check for errors in the configuration: sudo nginx -t

Restart nginx service from systemd: sudo systemctl restart nginx

One last thing left to do is generate ssl certificates for the znc subdomain. You can do that by using certbot command. Enter it and follow the instructions to proceed.

Now your znc web interface should be accessible from znc.yourdomain.xyz