Forum OpenACS Q&A: Apache as reverse proxy

I just installed Apache to serve as a reverse proxy for different AOLservers. Everything *seems* to work like a charm. I have never touched Apache before, so I have no clue about detailed configuration and administration... My questions:

1. I manually started Apache with "apachectl start"... How do I keep Apache alive + start on boot? Is there anything similar to my aolserver inittab entry? I am not using daemontools...

2. Do I have to turn off any Apache services that are not being used for reverse proxying and that might evoke security issues?

3. These are my lines from httpd.conf for reverse proxying:

<VirtualHost *>
    ServerName www.myserver.com
    proxypass / http://myip:8000/
    proxypassreverse / http://myip:8000/
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *>
    ServerName mysubdomain.myserver.com
    proxypass / http://myip:8000/
    proxypassreverse / http://myip:8000/
</VirtualHost>

How can I redirect all other subdomains like novalidsubdomain.myserver.com and myserver.com to www.myserver.com?

Thanks

I actually went to far as to recompile Apache to support no modules except what I needed and I commented out all the http commands I am not using.

How can I redirect all other subdomains like novalidsubdomain.myserver.com and myserver.com to www.myserver.com? Set up the <VirtualHost _default_:*> section to be the redirector. I'm not sure what exact commands to use but if you can't do it in Apache you can always have the default site go to an aolserver page that does the redirection.

If you want to remain subsite-aware you'll need the target of your proxypass to be distinct for each subsite. Apache sends the Host header you specify in the proxypass line instead of the user-supplied host header.

Alfred, I am running RH 8.0... forgot to mention that.

David, I changed my config file, but it still doesn't work properly:

<VirtualHost *>
    ServerName www.myserver.de
    proxypass / http://www.myserver.de:8000/
    proxypassreverse / http://www.myserver.de:8000/
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *>
    ServerName sd1.myserver.de
    proxypass / http://sd1.myserver.de:8000/
    proxypassreverse / http://sd1.myserver.de:8000/
</VirtualHost>

<VirtualHost *>
    ServerName sd2.arasis.de
    proxypass / http://sd2.myserver.de:8000/
    proxypassreverse / http://sd2.myserver.de:8000/
</VirtualHost>

Now ad_host always shows me the value of proxypass of the *top* VirtualHost tag... In this example www.myserver.de

I found out about the subdomain problem:

I had to put a "NameVirtualHost MyIP" on top of the three VirtualHost tags and replace the three "*" with MyIP...

I am still searching for a solution to redirect i.e. myserver.com to www.myserver.com... Any more detailed suggestions?

What about the error.log? Is AOLserver still logging regularly when being reverse proxied?

Hello John,

nope, I have never looked at mod_rewrite... could you make an example?

Use "ServerAlias" on its own line after ServerName.  e.g. if ServerName is www.zill.net, set ServerAlias to zill.net .  All the other settings in that VirtualHost container will apply regardless of which hostname is used by the person accessing your site.

David, the docs at httpd.apache.org will give you all the details.  However, for my purposes I use ServerAlias for those cases where I want both www.mydomain.com and mydomain.com to be handled the same.