Apache as Proxy for Tomcat with Subdomain - apache

Question

Even though I found some similar reports on SO no suggestion solved my issue. So I decided to raise a question myself.
I am running Confluence (and Jira) as WARs on a Tomcat instance on Ubuntu. The application is accessible via http://localhost:8080/confluence. I would like to configure apache as a proxy to allow public access via http://confluence.<servername>.de. Following the instructions on https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Using+Apache+with+mod_proxy#UsingApachewithmod_proxy-complex I did the following steps:
appended the attributes proxyName="confluence.<servername>.de" and proxyPort="80" to the Connector element in /var/lib/tomcat7/conf/server.xml.
Defined a virtual host in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/confluence.conf
The confluence.conf has the following content:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName confluence.<servername>.de
ProxyRequests Off
ProxyPreserveHost On
<Proxy *>
Order deny,allow
Allow from all
</Proxy>
ProxyPass / http://localhost:8080/confluence
ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8080/confluence
ProxyHTMLURLMap / /confluence/
<Location />
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Location>
</VirtualHost>
With this configuration I cannot invoke http://localhost:8080/confluence due to this (wget) output:
--2014-12-23 08:38:13-- http://localhost:8080/confluence
Resolving localhost (localhost)... ::1, 127.0.0.1
Connecting to localhost (localhost)|::1|:8080... failed: Connection refused.
Connecting to localhost (localhost)|127.0.0.1|:8080... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 Found
Location: http://confluence.<servername>.de/confluence/ [following]
--2014-12-23 08:38:13-- http://confluence.<servername>.de/confluence/
Resolving confluence.<servername>.de (confluence.<servername>.de)... 92.51.163.197
Connecting to confluence.<servername>.de (confluence.<servername>.de)|92.51.163.197|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not Found
2014-12-23 08:38:13 ERROR 404: Not Found.
If I remove the attributes proxyName and proxyPort this access is possible. However, the invocation via http://confluence.<servername>.de still yields errors. The output of Apache log suggests that the URL rewrite is corrupt:
[Tue Dec 23 08:50:47.952647 2014] [authz_core:debug] [pid 24715:tid 140609413170944] mod_authz_core.c(828): [client 37.201.226.149:11808] AH01628: authorization result: granted (no directives)
[Tue Dec 23 08:50:47.952809 2014] [proxy:debug] [pid 24715:tid 140609413170944] mod_proxy.c(1104): [client 37.201.226.149:11808] AH01143: Running scheme http handler (attempt 0)
[Tue Dec 23 08:50:47.952838 2014] [proxy:debug] [pid 24715:tid 140609413170944] proxy_util.c(2020): AH00942: HTTP: has acquired connection for (localhost)
[Tue Dec 23 08:50:47.952851 2014] [proxy:debug] [pid 24715:tid 140609413170944] proxy_util.c(2072): [client 37.201.226.149:11808] AH00944: connecting http://localhost:8080/confluence to localhost:8080
[Tue Dec 23 08:50:47.953069 2014] [proxy:debug] [pid 24715:tid 140609413170944] proxy_util.c(2206): [client 37.201.226.149:11808] AH00947: connected /confluence to localhost:8080
[Tue Dec 23 08:50:47.953176 2014] [proxy:debug] [pid 24715:tid 140609413170944] proxy_util.c(2483): (111)Connection refused: AH00957: HTTP: attempt to connect to [::1]:8080 (localhost) failed
[Tue Dec 23 08:50:47.953277 2014] [proxy:debug] [pid 24715:tid 140609413170944] proxy_util.c(2610): AH00962: HTTP: connection complete to [::1]:8080 (localhost)
[Tue Dec 23 08:50:47.956860 2014] [proxy:debug] [pid 24715:tid 140609413170944] proxy_util.c(2035): AH00943: http: has released connection for (localhost)
[Tue Dec 23 08:50:47.988123 2014] [authz_core:debug] [pid 24715:tid 140609402681088] mod_authz_core.c(828): [client 37.201.226.149:11808] AH01628: authorization result: granted (no directives)
[Tue Dec 23 08:50:47.988231 2014] [proxy:debug] [pid 24715:tid 140609402681088] mod_proxy.c(1104): [client 37.201.226.149:11808] AH01143: Running scheme http handler (attempt 0)
[Tue Dec 23 08:50:47.988250 2014] [proxy:debug] [pid 24715:tid 140609402681088] proxy_util.c(2020): AH00942: HTTP: has acquired connection for (localhost)
[Tue Dec 23 08:50:47.988264 2014] [proxy:debug] [pid 24715:tid 140609402681088] proxy_util.c(2072): [client 37.201.226.149:11808] AH00944: connecting http://localhost:8080/confluenceconfluence/ to localhost:8080
[Tue Dec 23 08:50:47.988277 2014] [proxy:debug] [pid 24715:tid 140609402681088] proxy_util.c(2206): [client 37.201.226.149:11808] AH00947: connected /confluenceconfluence/ to localhost:8080
[Tue Dec 23 08:50:47.990134 2014] [proxy:debug] [pid 24715:tid 140609402681088] proxy_util.c(2035): AH00943: http: has released connection for (localhost)
Am I missing anything? By the way, if I adjust the virtual host configuration in a way that the URL http://<servername>.de/confluence is used as a proxy everything works fine.
Any suggestion would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

My personal preference is to deploy applications in subfolders and set up proxy like:
ProxyPass "/confluence/" "http://localhost:8080/confluence/"
ProxyPassReverse "/confluence/" "http://localhost:8080/confluence/"
No need for ProxyHTMLURLMap, that's probably why you see "AH00944: connecting http://localhost:8080/confluenceconfluence/ to localhost:8080"
Setting up like you intended might be a little tricky, since you need the fully qualified domain name of your machine to be confluence.servername.de and you need an A record in your local DNS for this as well. I second Slash's question: can you ping confluence.servername.de?
When this is taken care of, you may also want to look into using these directives, as needed:
ProxyRequests Off
ProxyVia Off
RemoteIPHeader X-Forwarded-For
RequestHeader unset Accept-Encoding
ProxyHTMLEnable On
ProxyHTMLExtended On
<Proxy *>
Require all granted
</Proxy>