Forum OpenACS Q&A: Re: AOLserver 4 not yet ready for prime time if you need SSL

allthough i am not answering your question,
our setup might be an option for you in case there are still
problems with ns_ssl. On our setup, all user requests are
using SSL and we are using multiple aolserver 4.* in
production. However, we use the reverse proxy pound
on all incoming requests. Pound does the ssl-decoding,
and forwards the requests in plain HTTP to the backup
servers depending on the URL.

This configuration based on pound works without problems
on our server since more than 1.5 years, i have seen up to 300 concurrent pound connections.

So, the ssl issue - if it still exists - should not
be a show stopper...

greetings
-gustaf

If i remember correctly, we just added in the
oacs code the following switch to rp_filter in the
request processor procs, such it returns the
forwarded-for address instead of the
proxy in an [ad_conn peeraddr].

We handle redirections in the proxy and use the
access logfile of pound instead of the aolserver.

-gustaf

if { [ns_config -bool ns/parameters ReverseProxyMode 0] } {
  set addr [lindex [ns_set iget [ns_conn headers] x-forwarded-for] end]
  if {[string length $addr] == 0} {
    set addr [ns_conn peeraddr]
  }
  ad_conn -set peeraddr $addr
} else {
  ad_conn -set peeraddr [ns_conn peeraddr]
}

Gustav,

I let Pound add an extra X header when the client has a HTTPS connection to Pound. X-SSL-Request is set to true to indicate that the connection to the browser is secure.

The request processor and the security procs of OpenACS then treat the connection as if directly connection over HTTPS to AOLserver. Or in a schema:

HTTPS -> Pound -> HTTP + X-SSL-Request: true -> AOLserver

is treated the same as:

HTTPS -> AOLserver

For now the mods to OpenACS don't verify that the IP address of the request coming from Pound is indeed originating from a trusted proxy. A hacker knowing the (internal) IP address of the proxy could potentially spoof a secure connection. Cross-referencing the IP address against a (list of) trusted IP address(es), however, is trivial to add.

Did you know that AOLserver 4.x automatically records the X-Forwarded-For IP address?

Bart
the Code Mill