Install ShareLaTex on Centos/Ubuntu/Debian server with CSF Firewall enabled

Today I spent a couple of hours to install ShareLaTex on a CentOS server so that I can collaborate with some other people on publishing papers...

The best way to install ShareLaTex on any platform is to use their Docker image (Instructions here).

docker run -d \
  -v ~/sharelatex_data:/var/lib/sharelatex \
  --name=sharelatex \
  -p 3000:80 \
  sharelatex/sharelatex

The above command installs SharedLaTex docker image, shares Host's ~/sharelatex_data folder to save data inside and forwards port 3000 of the host machine to the docker so that ShareLaTex can be accessible from host external IP address. (IP:3000)

If you have CSF firewall installed, docker0 interface won't work correctly and the host machine will not be accessible from the container. This can be fixed by adding the following entries to /etc/csf/csfpost.sh

iptables -t nat -N DOCKER
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -m addrtype --dst-type LOCAL -j DOCKER
iptables -t nat -A OUTPUT ! -d 127.0.0.0/8 -m addrtype --dst-type LOCAL -j DOCKER
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s 172.17.0.0/16 ! -o docker0 -j MASQUERADE

iptables -t filter -N DOCKER
iptables -t filter -A FORWARD -o docker0 -j DOCKER
iptables -t filter -A FORWARD -o docker0 -m conntrack --ctstate RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT
iptables -t filter -A FORWARD -i docker0 ! -o docker0 -j ACCEPT
iptables -t filter -A FORWARD -i docker0 -o docker0 -j ACCEPT

iptables -A -A FORWARD -i docker0 -o eth0 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A FORWARD -i eth0 -o docker0 -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -i docker0 -j ACCEPT

csfpost.sh ought to be executable (+x).

Also we should whitelist local IP address of the container by adding the following line to /etc/csf/csf.allow:

172.17.0.0/16

Now restart CSF and enjoy your ShareLaTex installation:

csf -r

That's it!