---
title: Starting the server
order: 1
---

# Starting the server

You can host your own custom Expose server in order to make use of your own domain, when sharing your local sites.  

The expose binary that you install via composer contains both the server and the client, so you do not need any additional software for this to work.

Once you have successfully downloaded expose, you can start the server using this command:

````bash
expose serve my-domain.com
````

This will start listening for incoming expose client connections on port 8080 by default.

If you want, you can customize the port:

```bash
expose serve my-domain.com --port=3000
```

## Validating auth tokens

When you start your expose server, anyone is able to connect to it by default. If you want to restrict your server only to users that have a valid "authentication token", you can start the server with the `--validateAuthTokens` option:

```bash
expose serve my-domain.com --validateAuthTokens
```

Don't worry - you can also change this later on through the admin interface.

## Keeping the expose server running with supervisord

The `expose serve` daemon needs to always be running in order to accept connections. This is a prime use case for `supervisor`, a task runner on Linux.

First, make sure `supervisor` is installed.

```bash
# On Debian / Ubuntu
apt install supervisor

# On Red Hat / CentOS
yum install supervisor
systemctl enable supervisord

# On Mac
brew install supervisor
```

Once installed, add a new process that `supervisor` needs to keep running. You place your configurations in the `/etc/supervisor/conf.d` (Debian/Ubuntu) or `/etc/supervisord.d` (Red Hat/CentOS) directory.

Within that directory, create a new file called `expose.conf`.

```bash
[program:expose]
command=/usr/bin/php /home/expose/expose serve
numprocs=1
autostart=true
autorestart=true
user=forge
```

Once created, instruct `supervisor` to reload its configuration files (without impacting the already running `supervisor` jobs).

```bash
supervisorctl update
supervisorctl start expose
```

Your expose server should now be running (you can verify this with `supervisorctl status`). If it were to crash, `supervisor` will automatically restart it.

Please note that, by default, `supervisor` will force a maximum number of open files onto all the processes that it manages. This is configured by the `minfds` parameter in `supervisord.conf`.

If you want to increase the maximum number of open files, you may do so in `/etc/supervisor/supervisord.conf` (Debian/Ubuntu) or `/etc/supervisord.conf` (Red Hat/CentOS):

```
[supervisord]
minfds=10240; (min. avail startup file descriptors;default 1024)
```

After changing this setting, you'll need to restart the supervisor process (which in turn will restart all your processes that it manages).


## Connecting the client

To configure a client to connect to your custom server, first [publish the configuration file](/docs/expose/client/configuration) on the client. Once that is done, you can change the `host` and `port` configuration values on your client.

```php
return [

    /*
    |--------------------------------------------------------------------------
    | Host
    |--------------------------------------------------------------------------
    |
    | The expose server to connect to. By default, expose is using the free 
    | sharedwithexpose.com server, offered by Beyond Code. You will need a free
    | Beyond Code account in order to authenticate with the server.
    | Feel free to host your own server and change this value.
    |
    */
    'host' => 'my-domain.com',

    /*
    |--------------------------------------------------------------------------
    | Port
    |--------------------------------------------------------------------------
    |
    | The port that expose will try to connect to. If you want to bypass 
    | firewalls and have proper SSL encrypted tunnels, make sure to use
    | port 443 and use a reverse proxy for Expose. 
    |
    | The free default server is already running on port 443.
    |
    */
    'port' => 3030,

    // ...
```

Now that your basic expose server is running, let's take a look at how you can add SSL support.