openHAB: redirect port 8080 to port 80

The openHAB Raspberry image, by default, listens on port 8080. After using the image for a while, it became quite boring to always add the port to the URL. Quickly I decided to redirect port 80 to port 8080, and make my life easier.

Not sure how much work that is in the openHAB settings, I settled with redirecting or forwarding the port 80 to port 8080.

There are a few options: use a proxy, install a full flavored webserver and use that as a proxy, use a tool which generates a 301 or 302 redirect on port 80, or use a tool which redirects the traffic itself.

The small utility redir seemed like a good start, and the operating system already has a package for that. All I have to do is install the package, and create a service file for systemd sigh.

Let’s start with the package installation: that’s an easy task using Ansible. I decided to move everything into a separate role named redir, this way I can just pull in the role. The directory structure looks like this:

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Playbook Directory
 -> roles/
 -> roles/redir/
 -> roles/redir/tasks/
 -> roles/redir/templates/

The tasks directory holds a main.yml file which has all required installation instructions. The templates directory has the template for the service file: redir.service. The main.yml file:

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---

- name: redir packages
  apt:
    name: "{{ item }}"
    state: present
  with_items:
    - redir

- name: Install systemd service file
  copy:
    src: "{{ role_path }}/templates/redir.service"
    dest: /etc/systemd/system/redir.service
  register: systemd_redir_service_file

- name: Enable redir service
  systemd:
    name: redir
    enabled: yes
    state: started

- name: Restart redir service
  service:
    name: redir
    state: restarted
  when: systemd_redir_service_file.changed

Three steps:

1. Install the redir package
2. Copy the template file to the remote host, into the systemd service directory
3. Restart the service, in case something changed

And finally, the service file:

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[Unit]
Description=redir service for redirecting port 80 to 8080
After=syslog.target network.target openhab2.service

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/redir :80 :8080
ExecStop=/usr/bin/killall -15 redir
Restart=always
Type=forking
User=root
Group=root
RestartSec=2
WorkingDirectory=/tmp

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

The service itself is started using this line:

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ExecStart=/usr/bin/redir :80 :8080

This tells redir to redirect all traffic from port 80 to port 8080. Because the port 80 is a privileged port, the service must be started as root.

Now all I have to do is adding the role in my main Playbook:

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---

- hosts: all
  become: yes
  roles:
    - redir

  tasks: