theta-env

The whole theta42 identity + access stack in one repo, brought up with a single command — for home labs and small businesses.

It wires together two projects that already work on their own:

• SSO Manager — an OIDC provider with a built-in LDAP directory (OpenLDAP) and a web UI for managing users, groups, and OAuth clients.
• theta42/proxy — an OIDC-protected reverse proxy (OpenResty) that puts any of your apps behind SSO login and can look users up directly in LDAP.

Each project still runs standalone (docker compose up in its own folder); this repo just composes them and automates the first-run glue so they find each other.

            ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────┐
            │  your browser / apps                          │
            └───────────────┬──────────────────────────────┘
                            │ https
                  ┌─────────▼─────────┐
                  │  proxy            │  OpenResty :80/:443/:4443
                  │  (OIDC + LDAP)    │  mgmt app :3000 (localhost)
                  └─────────┬─────────┘  bundled redis
              ┌─────────────┼──────────────────────┐
              │ ldaps:636   │ http:3001 (internal)│  OIDC token/userinfo
              ▼             ▼                      │
      ┌──────────────────────────┐                │
      │  sso-manager             │◄────────────────┘
      │  OIDC provider + OpenLDAP │  bundled redis
      │  web UI :3001 (localhost) │
      │  ldaps :636 (LAN clients) │
      └───────────────────────────┘

The proxy fronts the SSO Manager UI under TLS and protects it with OIDC login. It is both an OIDC client of the SSO (for login) and a direct LDAP client (for user lookups). Legacy apps can still bind to LDAPS on the SSO directly.

---

Before you begin

You'll need three things set up ahead of time — a domain, DNS records, and port forwarding. The setup script can't do these for you; they're outside the host.

1. A domain you control

You need a real DNS domain (e.g. lab.example.com) because the proxy issues real TLS certificates for it via Let's Encrypt. A .local or made-up name only gets you a self-signed cert (browsers will warn — fine for testing, painful for daily use).

2. At least two hostnames, pointing at your public IP

You need a DNS A record for each hostname you want the stack to serve, all pointing at the public IP of the host running this stack (or your router, if the host is behind it). At a minimum:

Hostname (example)	What it serves
sso.lab.example.com	The SSO Manager UI (login, user/group/OAuth-client admin).
proxy.lab.example.com	The proxy's own management UI (add the apps you want to protect).

Two is the minimum. You'll almost certainly want more: every app you put behind the proxy needs its own hostname too (e.g. wiki.lab.example.com, photos.lab.example.com). Add those DNS records as you add apps — create them now if you already know what you'll front.

Quick local test, no DNS? You can skip real DNS by adding the hostnames to /etc/hosts on the machine you browse from, pointing at the stack host. The proxy will then fall back to a self-signed cert. Fine for kicking the tires, not for real use.

3. Port forwarding: 80 and 443 to the host

On your router / firewall, forward these from your public IP to the host running the stack:

Port	Why
80 (HTTP)	Required for Let's Encrypt to verify domain ownership (ACME HTTP-01 challenge). Without it, you get the self-signed fallback.
443 (HTTPS)	The real traffic — all the UIs and proxied apps.

Both must reach the host. Port 80 must be reachable from the internet even though you'll only use 443 — that's just how Let's Encrypt validates. (If you really can't open 80, the stack still runs on the self-signed cert; you'll just see browser warnings.)

Optional extra ports (only if you need them):

• 4443 — alternate HTTPS listener (e.g. if 443 is taken by something else).
• 636 (LDAPS) — only if a legacy app on another machine binds to LDAP directly over the network. The proxy itself reaches LDAP over the internal Docker network, so you do not need to expose 636 for the stack to work.

4. Docker + Docker Compose

Any recent Docker with Compose — the v2 plugin (docker compose) or the v1 standalone (docker-compose) both work.

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Quickstart

git clone --recursive https://github.com/theta42/theta-env.git
cd theta-env
cp .env.example .env        # then edit .env (see below)
./setup.sh

./setup.sh is idempotent — re-run it any time to converge the stack to your .env. It:

1. Builds + starts the SSO Manager container, waits for it to be healthy.
2. Runs the bootstrap (bootstrap/bootstrap.js) inside the SSO container, which:
   • creates the LDAP service account the proxy binds as (cn=ldapclient,ou=people,<base>),
   • creates your first admin user and adds them to the app_sso_admin + app_sso_oauth_admin groups,
   • registers the proxy as an OIDC client in the SSO, and
   • prints the client id + secret.
3. Writes ./proxy.env (the proxy's config — OIDC endpoints, LDAP bind, client creds) from your .env + the bootstrap output.
4. Builds + starts the proxy container, waits for it to be healthy.
5. Prints your first admin login + the public URLs.

.env — the values you must set

Copy .env.example to .env and at minimum set:

Key	What it is
LDAP_BASE_DN	Your directory base, e.g. dc=lab,dc=local.
LDAP_ADMIN_PASS	The LDAP root password. Save it — needed for raw LDAP admin.
JWT_SECRET	Signs the SSO's access/refresh tokens. Leave blank to auto-generate + persist. Save it.
SSO_HOST	Public hostname the proxy serves the SSO UI at, e.g. sso.lab.local.
PROXY_HOST	Public hostname the proxy serves its own mgmt UI at, e.g. proxy.lab.local.
BOOTSTRAP_ADMIN_UID / BOOTSTRAP_ADMIN_PASS	Your first admin login. Re-running setup.sh resets this password.

Values with spaces: quote them, e.g. ORG_NAME="My Org" or SMTP_FROM="Theta SSO <noreply@example.com>". Quotes are optional but recommended anywhere a value contains spaces — setup.sh and docker compose both strip a single pair of matching outer quotes.

Optional: BOOTSTRAP_ADMIN_EMAIL, LDAP_SERVICE_PASS (auto-generated if blank), SMTP_* (for SSO password-reset/invite emails), and host port overrides (SSO_PORT, LDAPS_PORT, HTTP_PORT, HTTPS_PORT, HTTPS_ALT_PORT, MGMT_PORT). See .env.example for the full list with comments.

---

After setup

• SSO Manager UI: https://<SSO_HOST> — log in as your bootstrap admin to add users, groups, and OAuth clients. (First-run fallback: http://<host>:3001, reachable on the LAN by default.)
• Proxy mgmt UI: https://<PROXY_HOST> — add the Host records you want to protect with OIDC. (First-run fallback: http://<host>:3000, reachable on the LAN by default.)
• Direct LDAP for legacy apps: bind to ldaps://<host>:636 as cn=admin,<base> (admin) or cn=ldapclient,ou=people,<base> (read-only service account the bootstrap created). Use LDAPS, not plain LDAP.

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Logs

The stack runs under Docker Compose with two services — sso-manager and proxy. Both the Node app and, for the SSO, OpenLDAP write to the container's stdout/stderr, so docker compose logs is the primary view.

# Follow both services live
docker compose logs -f

# One service
docker compose logs -f sso-manager
docker compose logs -f proxy

# Last 200 lines and keep following
docker compose logs --tail=200 -f proxy

# Only the last 10 minutes
docker compose logs --since=10m sso-manager

The plain container names work too (docker logs -f sso-manager, docker logs -f proxy) — handy if you started the stack without Compose.

Proxy nginx access/error logs

OpenResty writes its access/error logs to files inside the container (/var/log/nginx, on the proxy-logs volume), so they do not appear in docker logs proxy. Tail them directly:

docker compose exec proxy tail -f /var/log/nginx/access.log
docker compose exec proxy tail -f /var/log/nginx/error.log

SSO / LDAP logs

slapd runs with -d 0 and logs to stderr, so LDAP output is already in docker compose logs sso-manager. For a targeted health check, exec into the SSO and query the directory directly:

docker compose exec sso-manager ldapsearch -x -H ldap://localhost:389 \
  -D "cn=admin,${LDAP_BASE_DN}" -W -b "${LDAP_BASE_DN}"

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Backups

The directory lives in the ldap-data Docker volume. Back it up with slapcat (the portable LDIF export — survives OpenLDAP version upgrades):

docker compose exec sso-manager slapcat -f /etc/openldap/slapd.conf -b "$LDAP_BASE_DN" > backup.ldif

Restore is ldapadd/ldapmodify from that LDIF into a fresh directory. Also keep your .env (it holds LDAP_ADMIN_PASS + JWT_SECRET) and proxy.env.

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Running each project standalone

The two submodules work on their own — this repo just composes them:

• SSO Manager alone:

  cd sso-manager-node
  cp secrets.js.example nodejs/conf/secrets.js   # edit it
  docker compose up -d --build
  

  See its DEPLOYMENT.md.

• Proxy alone (pointing at any external SSO + LDAP via app_* env or a mounted secrets.js):

  cd proxy
  docker compose up -d --build
  

  See its DEPLOYMENT.md.

No cross-repo file edits are needed at runtime — the unified stack is pure composition (one compose file + one bootstrap script).

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How the first-run wiring works

bootstrap/bootstrap.js runs inside the SSO Manager container (bind-mounted read-only from this repo) and is deliberately self-contained: it uses only Node built-ins (child_process, crypto) + global fetch. LDAP operations use the openldap-clients binaries (ldapadd/ldapsearch/ldapmodify) with explicit admin creds from .env; the OAuth client is created via the SSO's own HTTP API (logging in as the bootstrapped admin, which also validates that admin's password end-to-end). It does not require the SSO's internal models, so it never has to fight the app's config layer.

It's idempotent: re-running converges to your .env values. The LDAP service account + admin passwords are reset to .env on each run; the OAuth client is created if missing, left alone if proxy.env is present, or rotated if proxy.env was lost (so a wiped-and-restored proxy gets a secret it can read).

Passwords are stored as {SSHA512} (the SSO's hashPasswordSSHA512, replicated exactly in the bootstrap) so the SSO can verify them on bind.

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Security notes

1. Only expose 443 (and optionally 4443) to the internet. The SSO web port (3001) and the proxy mgmt UI (3000) default to 0.0.0.0 for first-run convenience, so they're reachable on your LAN (they're login-protected, but it widens the attack surface). The proxy fronts both under TLS in normal use, so set SSO_BIND=127.0.0.1 and MGMT_BIND=127.0.0.1 in .env to lock them to the host once you're up and running. LDAPS (636) is the only LDAP listener that should cross the network.
2. Persist + protect .env and proxy.env. They hold LDAP_ADMIN_PASS, JWT_SECRET, the LDAP service password, and the OAuth client secret. setup.sh writes proxy.env mode 0600; both are in .gitignore.
3. LDAPS uses the SSO's self-signed cert by default. The proxy binds with app_ldap__tlsOptions__rejectUnauthorized=false. For strict trust, mount the SSO's cert (ldap-certs volume) into the proxy and set app_ldap__tlsOptions__ca=<path> in proxy.env.
4. Re-running setup.sh resets the bootstrap admin + service passwords to .env. If you change a user's password in the SSO UI later, re-running setup.sh will reset the bootstrap admin's password back to BOOTSTRAP_ADMIN_PASS.
5. Both containers run their app process as root (matching the bare-metal systemd units) for simplicity at this scale. Harden to a non-root user for a stricter deployment.

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Repo layout

theta-env/
├── .env.example          # copy to .env, edit
├── docker-compose.yml    # sso-manager + proxy on one bridge net
├── setup.sh              # one-command idempotent bring-up
├── bootstrap/
│   └── bootstrap.js      # runs in the sso-manager container
├── sso-manager-node/     # git submodule
└── proxy/                # git submodule

./setup.sh updates both submodules to the latest of their tracked remote branch before building, so each run builds current upstream — no manual git submodule update --remote needed. To lock to the pinned commits (offline rebuild, or a deliberate pin), run SKIP_SUBMODULE_UPDATE=1 ./setup.sh.