I have a domain and VPS. I want to expose a local dev server running on my laptop to something like mydomain.xyz/something temporarily. I want to host it myself and would prefer open-source tools.
ssh -R 8000:localhost:80 mydomain.xyz
Now you should be able to access your local laptop on port 8000 of the VPS. There are a few easy steps you can add if you want to make it a bit more ergonomic or permanent. If you don't want to use an alternate port, you can just forward the port on the VPS with iptables.
iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -i eth0 -p tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-port 8000
If you want the link to be more permanent, I'd suggest using wireguard instead of ssh. That's a little more effort, but not ridiculous.
- put "GatewayPorts clientspecified" into /etc/ssh/sshd_config, restart sshd
- ssh -R 0.0.0.0:8000:localhost:80 (the first parameter is the address where the tunnel should listen -- you can also pass something like 192.168.0.123 and expose it only to LAN etc.)
It's then reachable on your_vps:8000.
If you need it on the "correct" port and you are already running some other webserver (so you need to share that port), you need to set up a reverse proxy based on hostname or URL. I personally use haproxy, but for example nginx can do it too.