Webmin login keeps looping to session_login.cgi - apache

Question

I've had a working webmin setup on a VPS, however after trying to force it to connect via HTTPS I've done goof somewhere and now whenever I try to login the login page doesn't display correctly (no blue rectange background) and trying to login via https://server1.domain.me:10000 keeps redirecting me to https://server1.domain.me:10000/webmin/session_login.cgi, which is again a login page.
Before it began malfunctioning, I had the following file in /etc/apache2/sites-available
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster#domain.me
ServerName domain.me
ServerAlias www.domain.me
DocumentRoot /var/www/domain.me/
<Directory />
RedirectMatch temp ^/$ /public_html
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
</Directory>
<Directory /var/www/domain.me>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
<Directory /var/www/domain.me/redmine>
AllowOverride None
order allow,deny
allow from all
RailsBaseURI /redmine
PassengerResolveSymlinksInDocumentRoot on
</Directory>
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/
<Directory "/usr/lib/cgi-bin">
AllowOverride None
Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
# Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
# alert, emerg.
LogLevel warn
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
ServerSignature On
RailsEnv production
RailsBaseURI /redmine
</VirtualHost>
When I tried to force webmin (and owncloud if that matters) to use HTTPS I created a new Virtualhost for port 443 using my SSL keys and updated Virtualhost for port 80 to proxy all http://domain.me/webmin to https://server1.domain.me:10000 (I kept commented-out configs for you to see what I've tried):
<VirtualHost *:443>
ServerAdmin webmaster#domain.me
ServerName server1.domain.me
alias /owncloud /var/www/domain.me/owncloud
DocumentRoot /var/www/domain.me/
SSLEngine On
SSLProxyEngine On
SSLCertificateFile /etc/ssl/ssl.crt/server1_domain_me.crt
SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/ssl/ssl.crt/server1.key
SSLCACertificateFile /etc/ssl/ssl.crt/COMODORSADomainValidationSecureServerCA.crt
ProxyRequests Off
<Proxy *>
Order deny,allow
Allow from all
</Proxy>
# <Location /webmin>
# RewriteEngine On
# #RewriteRule (.*) https://server1.domain.me:10000/$1 [R,L]
# ProxyPass https://server1.domain.me:10000/
# ProxyPassReverse https://server1.domain.me:10000/
# </Location>
<Directory /var/www/domain.me/owncloud>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
Satisfy Any
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine on
<IfModule mod_ssl.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/?(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}/owncloud$
</IfModule>
</IfModule>
</Directory>
# ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/
# <Directory "/usr/lib/cgi-bin">
# AllowOverride None
# Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
# Order allow,deny
# Allow from all
# </Directory>
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
# Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
# alert, emerg.
LogLevel warn
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
ServerSignature On
</VirtualHost>
and updated my domain.me virtualhost file to:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerAdmin webmaster#domain.me
ServerName domain.me
ServerAlias www.domain.me
#SSLEngine On
SSLProxyEngine On
SSLProxyCheckPeerCN off
SSLProxyCheckPeerExpire off
<Proxy *>
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Proxy>
DocumentRoot /var/www/domain.me/
<Directory />
RedirectMatch temp ^/$ /public_html
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
</Directory>
<Directory /var/www/domain.me>
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
allow from all
</Directory>
<Directory /var/www/domain.me/redmine>
AllowOverride None
order allow,deny
allow from all
RailsBaseURI /redmine
PassengerResolveSymlinksInDocumentRoot on
</Directory>
<Location /owncloud>
ProxyPass https://server1.domain.me/owncloud/
</Location>
<Location /server1>
ProxyPass https://server1.domain.me/webmin/
</Location>
ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/
<Directory "/usr/lib/cgi-bin">
AllowOverride None
Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</Directory>
ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
# Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit,
# alert, emerg.
LogLevel warn
CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
ServerSignature On
RailsEnv production
RailsBaseURI /redmine
#ProxyPassReverse /owncloud https://server1.domain.me/owncloud/
#ProxyPassReverse /webmin https://server1.domain.me:10000/
</VirtualHost>
I also added the lines webprefix=/webmin, webprefixnoredir=1 and referer=domain.me to /etc/webmin/config
However, something is clearly wrong here because I cannot login to webmin at all. I've been searching the web for an answer for the past 5 hours, tried a lot of thing and still no luck.
Any ideas?

Answer 1

There are 4 critical (and undocumented!) keys to get this to work, as I found through much aggravation!
1) When you edit /etc/webmin/config, make sure there is NO WHITE SPACE at the end of the webprefix=/webmin line. That will fix the problem where the login screen formatting is funky.
2) You need to be extremely precise in your use of slashes in your ProxyPass (and they don't match the official documentation!)
ProxyPass /webmin/ http://localhost:10000/
ProxyPassReverse /webmin/ http://localhost:10000/
3) You need to include cookie ProxyPass lines (again not in the documentation!).
ProxyPassReverseCookieDomain /webmin/ http://localhost:10000/
ProxyPassReverseCookiePath /webmin/ http://localhost:10000/
4) When you browse to Webmin, you MUST INCLUDE a trailing slash!
http://your.domain.name/webmin/
* UPDATE *
Pertaining to point 4:
To make sure the trailing slash is always present when you browse to Webmin, add these lines (prior to your proxy pass, if it matters?). With this added, if you forget to add the slash, Apache will simply do it for you:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^/webmin$ /webmin/ [R]

Answer 2

I had the same problem. I installed webmin set up apache with it, and after login screen, no redirection happened.But #MUHAHA was right. I set up my webmin with no /webmin directory, no nuthin!
I wrote a CNAME redirection rule in my domain provider. CNAME webmin.example.com to my raspberry pi's dynamic-dns service name.
my webmin.conf file in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/ directory:
<VirtualHost *:80>
ProxyPreserveHost On
ProxyRequests Off
ServerName webmin.example.com
ServerAlias webmin.example.com
ProxyPass / http://localhost:10000/
ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:10000/
ProxyPassReverseCookieDomain / http://localhost:10000/
ProxyPassReverseCookiePath / http://localhost:10000/
</VirtualHost>
after that i installed webmin... you know! :)
an then thanks to #MUHAHA, i changed that line 4043 in /usr/share/webmin/miniserv.pl file
change
&write_data("Location: $prot://$hostport$in{'page'}\r\n");
to
&write_data("Location: $prot://$host$in{'page'}\r\n");
and everythings peachy! Login redirects to the main page with ease!

Answer 3

#Buvinj
Im afraid, that this isnt enough..
To use proper SSL on Proxy, is needed to disable miniservers SSL
/etc/webmin/miniserv.conf
ssl=0
ssl_redirect=1
cookiepath=/webmin
/etc/webmin/config
webprefix=/webmin
webprefixnoredir=1
There are still problems with redirect after login, so this should help:
on webmin host edit file /usr/share/webmin/miniserv.pl
and on line 4043 replace
&write_data("Location: $prot://$hostport$in{'page'}\r\n");
to
&write_data("Location: $prot://$host$in{'page'}\r\n");
Source:
https://sourceforge.net/p/webadmin/discussion/600155/thread/6eb89f60/
But it doesnt work for me, i am redirected to root context (/) after login, not to /webmin context
EDIT:
$prot is always evaluated as http, even if you have ssl_redirect=1 in miniserv.conf
/usr/share/webmin/miniserv.pl
&write_data("Location: https://$hostport$config{'cookiepath'}$in{'page'}\r\n");
Rewrite rule for Location: in headers should also fix this problem.
EDIT2:
https://github.com/webmin/webmin/issues/350
https://github.com/webmin/webmin/issues/351