I'm routing game traffic on my VPS via wireguard to a home server that has games hosted via docker.
Setup is...
VPS/Wireguard -> Internet -> Wireguard/Dockerized Games Server
Now, my current config WORKS... however I'm curious if there is some unnecessary routing going on.
VPS iptable rules (omitted PostDown)
PostUp = iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i eth0 -p tcp --match multiport --dports 61000:61100 -j DNAT --to-destination 10.0.0.3
PostUp = iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE
Game Server (omitted PostDown)
Here are the iptable rules on the game server and the --to-destination part is what I'm curious about...
PostUp = iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -p tcp --dport 61000:61100 -d 10.0.0.3 -j DNAT --to-destination 192.168.1.14
PostUp = iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -j MASQUERADE
10.0.0.3 is the same machine as 192.168.1.14
The reason I'm setting the --to-destination ip to that is because the docker rules that are created in the Chain DOCKER section of the iptable rules are looking for the destination nam-games.localdomain which is my dns entry for the game server. I unfortunately don't think I can change these because I'm using a game server management panel called Pterodactyl that adds these. I also don't want to have to manually add rules to this every time I create a server.
Chain DOCKER (2 references)
target prot opt source destination
RETURN all -- anywhere anywhere
DNAT tcp -- anywhere nam-games.localdomain tcp dpt:61000 to:172.18.0.2:61000
DNAT udp -- anywhere nam-games.localdomain udp dpt:61000 to:172.18.0.2:61000
DNAT tcp -- anywhere nam-games.localdomain tcp dpt:61001 to:172.18.0.3:61001
DNAT udp -- anywhere nam-games.localdomain udp dpt:61001 to:172.18.0.3:61001
Concerns
The setup I described above is the only config I have gotten to work, but I'm curious if it's hitting the server, then going the router, only to be routed back to the same machine again. If it is, is there a better way to set this up?
TLDR; Overall, great. Had some growing pains but Linux feels faster/snappier than windows.
I'm a developer and a self host "enthusiast", so I was already a little familiar with Linux, but I ended up hopping from OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, to Kubuntu, to Arch Linux (using KDE Plasma).
I had issues with Tumbleweeds package manager, and overall it felt clunky. They have stricter security than other distros and it caused some weirdness with Dolphin and some other utilities/packages.
Kubuntu was fine but then I came across an article that Valve was going to be directly collaborating with Arch, so I said screw it and jumped to Arch.
I absolutely love Arch, but it definitely has a learning curve. I found a gentleman on youtube (OldTechBloke) that walked through installing it and has a Gitlab repo with all of the commands to install. I took that and used it as a starting point and modified it over the past ~8-9 months to suit my needs (I've installed it on two other laptops now as well)
The biggest issues I've had have been related to Nvidia, and oddly enough, my Gigabyte motherboard. I had to enable several kernel parameters so "sleep" would work correctly. Luckily the arch wiki is incredibly detailed.
For a regular user, I would recommend Kubuntu or Linux Mint.
Edit: Also, I dual booted for a while but I'm at a point now where I haven't been on Windows since like... February. PUBG and Tarkov are the only things keeping Windows around on my PC.