Apache: Using reverse proxy and run local website - apache

Question

On my linux machine I have apache2 running as a reverse proxy, because I wanted to make another webserver on port 8083 accessible while also making it password protected. For this I added this to my apache2.conf:
<VirtualHost *:80>
<Location / >
AuthName "Protected Area"
AuthType Basic
AuthUserFile /home/pi/.htpasswd
Require valid-user
</Location>
ProxyPass / http://localhost:8083/
ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8083/
</VirtualHost>
That works like a charm, but now I also want to use apache to serve a site, I would like to do this by making something like /mysite point to /var/www, but I can't really figure out how to do this or if it is even possible.
Any ideas?

Answer 1

I think you have two options:
1. Put the proxy in a separate <Location /someurl> and put the site outside. Requests to http://localhost/someurl/ will be proxied, everything else is the local site:
<VirtualHost *:80>
<Location /someurl >
# Password protection omitted for brevity
ProxyPass http://localhost:8083/
ProxyPassReverse http://localhost:8083/
</Location>
# Here is the site
DocumentRoot /var/www
# ... etc site config
</VirtualHost>
2. Use two separate VirtualHosts, one for the proxy and one for the site. You will need two separate hostnames pointing to your local ip. For local operations only, use /etc/hosts. In this exemple http://a.localhost/ is the proxy, http://b.localhost is the site:
/etc/hosts:
127.0.0.1 a.localhost
127.0.0.1 b.localhost
Apache config:
# This is the proxy, http://a.localhost/
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName a.localhost
# Do password protection as needed
ProxyPass / http://localhost:8083/
ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8083/
</VirtualHost>
# This is the site, http://b.localhost/
<VirtualHost *:80>
ServerName b.localhost
DocumentRoot /var/www
# ... etc site config
</VirtualHost>
I would probably go for two separate VirtualHosts, keeping stuff nicely separated.