bubble-flexrouter/README-release.md

Bubble Flex Router

bubble-flexrouter provides HTTP/HTTPS proxy services for Bubble.

Some websites and apps refuse to respond to requests originating from a cloud IP address. Thus, when a user is connected to their Bubble, some sites and apps will not work.

With flex routing, Bubble can route these requests through a device connected to the Bubble that is running bubble-flexrouter. Now, from the perspective of the website or app, these requests will originate from a “clean” IP, and so a valid response will be sent.

Note that using flex routing does remove some privacy protection - sites and apps that are flex-routed will see one of your device’s real IP addresses.

Required software

To use the flex_init.sh and flex_register.sh tools, you’ll need to have some software installed:

• bash
• curl
• jq
• htpassword

On Windows, use Cygwin to install these. htpasswd is not available from Cygwin. See below for a workaround.

Overview

In order to use bubble-flexrouter, you must:

• Initialize the flex router
• Connect to your Bubble
• Run bubble-flexrouter
• Register the flex router with your Bubble

We’ll walk through each of these steps next.

Initialize the flex router

This step only needs to be done once. After that, bubble-flexrouter will re-use the initialization settings.

On Mac OS and Linux, start by opening a Terminal window.

If you’re using Windows, start by opening a Cygwin bash shell. That’s what you’ll use to run these commands.

If you have htpasswd installed

To initialize your bubble-flexrouter, run the init script:

flex_init.sh

You will be prompted to enter a master password for the flex router. Remember this password.

You can also set this password using an environment variable

export BUBBLE_FR_PASS=some-plaintext-password
flex_init.sh

The above command will read the password from the BUBBLE_FR_PASS environment variable and will not prompt for a password.

If you don’t have htpasswd installed

If you don’t have htpasswd on your system, then you will need to manually bcrypt the password. You can do this online at https://bcrypt-generator.com/ -- ensure that “Rounds” is set to 12.

Then set the BUBBLE_FR_PASS environment variable to the bcrypted password and run flex_init.sh with the --bcrypt flag:

export BUBBLE_FR_PASS=some-bcrypted-password
flex_init.sh --bcrypt

Connect to your Bubble

Start the Bubble app and login. On Linux, run wg-quick up wg0 to connect.

Running Flex Router

You’ll need to run bubble-flexrouter as root (on Linux/MacOS) or Administrator (on Windows).

Set Environment

Set environment variables required to run the flex router.

These defaults should work, where ${HOME} is the home directory of the user who ran flex_init.sh:

export BUBBLE_FR_SSH_KEY=${HOME}/.ssh/flex
export BUBBLE_FR_PASS=${HOME}/.bfr_pass
export BUBBLE_FR_TOKEN=${HOME}/.bfr_token

On Windows, if you are using the standard Windows cmd program, replace export with set and ${HOME} with C:\cygwin64\home\<username> where <username> is the name of the user who ran flex_init.sh

Run the router

Now that you have your environment variable set, you can run the router.

On Linux and Mac OS:

sudo bubble-flexrouter

On Windows, use runas to run bubble-flexrouter as Administrator:

runas /user:domainname\username bubble-flexrouter

To see all available options:

bubble-flexrouter --help

Register the flex router with your Bubble

This step can be done as a regular user (non-root, non-Administrator).

Set Environment

You will need to set the BUBBLE_FR_PASS environment variable to register your router.

Unlike flex_init.sh (where this environment variable points to the file containing the bcrypted password), when you run flex_register.sh this environment variable should contain the actual plaintext password.

export BUBBLE_FR_PASS=the-password-you-used-when-running-flex_init.sh

On Windows, replace export with set if you are using the standard Windows cmd program.

Register the router

Run:

flex_register.sh your-bubble-hostname.example.com

Where your-bubble-hostname.example.com is the hostname of your Bubble.

If you’re not sure what the hostname is, click on “My Bubble” in the Bubble App and copy the hostname from your browser’s location bar.

On Linux, the hostname is not easily accessible, but you can use the IP address of your Bubble just the same. To get the IP address of your Bubble on Linux, run:

cat /etc/wireguard/wg0.conf | grep Endpoint | awk -F':' '{print $1}' | awk '{print $NF}'

Restarting bubble-flexrouter

Every time you start bubble-flexrouter, you need to run flex_register.sh to register the router with your Bubble.