Apache WebSphere Plugin home page - apache

We currently have Apache/ WAS setup and I want the Apache to handle the static content and it is working as expected.
My question:
We have always used www.xxx.com before and WAS used to handle the page, now we want to WEB server to handle the page and route www.xxx.com to www.xxx.com/index.jsp without the user knowing about it.
We want to user to type in www.xxx.xom in the url and get to the WAS through Apache.

If I get you correctly, you want a reverse proxy for dynamic content of your website. Apache has the mod_proxy that allows you to do that for selective URLs. The ProxyPass directive allows you to specify what URLs are mapped to which HTTP servers. HTTP headers are modified accordingly that the external information can reach the WAS that is hidden behind your Apache. IIRC, WAS can be configured to be aware of the reverse proxy.
Reverse proxy based on a prefix:
ProxyPass /mirror/foo/ http://backend.example.com/
Reverse proxy based on a regex:
ProxyPassMatch ^(/.*\.gif)$ http://backend.example.com$1

Related

Multiple protocols for internal communication between apache and tomcat

Tomcat in our application is considered back-and side and additionaly we have apache that fronting tomcat server as a reverse proxy and redirect requests to appropriate tomcat instance.
Now we need to set up HTTPS connection between apache proxy and tomcat for specific urls(Login, etc..). Tomcat documentation says that it's possible to achieve this with additional <Connector> within server.xml config.
In order to set up https over login page existing configuration with AJP protocol was replaced with the following:
ProxyPass /app/login/ https://127.0.0.1:6666/app/login/
All other urls specified like below:
ProxyPass /app/anyotherurl/ ajp://127.0.0.1:5555/app/anyotherurl/
With configuration below we expect that secure data (login/password) for login page will be encrypted and all other page will remain unchanged.
After the login apache should use normal ajp protocol because there is no sensetive information any more to protect. But it's not what actually happen in our case because for some reason apache is redirecting us to host specified in ProxyPass, namely to localhost.
This could happen due to the fact that our application while executing login logic on tomcat has two consecutive redirects.
We've tried to set ProxyPreserveHost on within virtual host to fix situation mentioned above, but we are not sure whether it is secure option and this one won't break another pages as well as we are not sure how it will work if tomcat will be located on other machine.
It would be good to know any other solution how such stuff can be applied internally for specific pages.

How to get original request URI in EL spring-boot page behind httpd proxypass

I have a spring-boot web application with embedded tomcat, running on port 28081, and httpd configured for proxying like this:
ProxyPass / http://localhost:28081/
ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:28081/
Then in a jsp page I need to pass the full request URL to a silverlight widget;but
${pageContext.request.serverName}:${pageContext.request.serverPort}
will resolve to http://localhost:28081.
So I thought to rely on X-Forwarded-Host, but there are cases when it does contain more than one proxy address, separated by comma. I am not sure it is safe to trust the order of the addresses will be preserved.
Is there a better way to do this, be that in the jsp, in the httpd configuration or in the controller code?
In the controller you can use ServletUriComponentsBuilder: initialize it from the request and it picks out the proxy headers and builds the URI for the origin for you, e.g. String uri = ServletUriComponentsBuilder.fromCurrentRequest().build().toString().
You can use ProxyPreserveHost in your httpd config to keep the original Host header, i.e. your outward domain name, but I can't think of a good way to pass the port.

How to configure mod_pagespeed for SSL pages

We have website e.g. http://www.acb.com which points to a hardware load-balancer which is suppose to load-balance two dedicated server. Each server is running apache as a frontend and uses mod_proxy to forward request to tomcat.
Some pages of our website require SSL like https://www.abc.com/login or https://www.abc.com/checkout
SSL is terminated at hardware load-balancer.
When I configured mod_pagespeed it compressed, minimized and merged css file and rewrote them with an absolute url http://www.abc.com/css/merged.pagespeedxxx.css instead of relative url /css/merged.pagespeedxxx.css.
It works fine for non ssl pages but when I navigate to an ssl page such as https://www.abc.com/login all the css and js files are blocked by browser like chrome as their absolute url is not using ssl.
How can I resolve this issue ?
Check for https string in this documentation and this one.
You should show us in your question your current ModPagespeedMapOriginDomain && ModPagespeedDomain settings.
From what I understand from these lines:
The origin_specified_in_html can specify https but the origin_to_fetch_from can only specify http, e.g.
ModPagespeedMapOriginDomain http://localhost https://www.example.com
This directive lets the server accept https requests for www.example.com without requiring a SSL certificate to fetch resources - in fact, this is the only way mod_pagespeed can service https requests as currently it cannot use https to fetch resources. For example, given the above mapping, and assuming Apache is configured for https support, mod_pagespeed will fetch and optimize resources accessed using https://www.example.com, fetching the resources from http://localhost, which can be the same Apache process or a different server process.
And these ones:
mod_pagespeed offers limited support for sites that serve content through https. There are two mechanisms through which mod_pagespeed can be configured to serve https requests:
Use ModPagespeedMapOriginDomain to map the https domain to an http domain.
Use ModPagespeedLoadFromFile to map a locally available directory to the https domain.
The solution would be something like that (or the one with ModPagespeedLoadFromFile)
ModPagespeedMapOriginDomain http://localhost https://www.example.com
BUT, the real problem for you is that apache does not directly receive the HTTPS requests as the hardware load balancer handle it on his own. So the mod-pagespeed output filter does not even know it was requested for an SSL domain. And when it modify the HTML content, applying domain rewrite maybe, it cannot handle the https case.
So... one solution (untested) would be using another virtualhost on the apache server, still HTTP if you want, dedicated to https handling. All https related urls (/login,/checkout,...) would then be redirected to this specific domain name by the hardware load balancer. Let's say http://secure.acb.com. This name is only in use between the load balancer and front apaches (and quite certainly apache should restrict access to this VH to the load balancer only).
Then in these http://secure.acb.com virtualhosts mod_pagespeed would be configured to externally rewrite domains to https://www.example.com. Something like:
ModPagespeedMapOriginDomain http://secure.example.com https://www.example.com
Finally the end user request is https://www.example.com/login, the load balancer manages HTTPS, talk to apache with http://secure.example.com, and page results contains only references to https://www.example.com/* assets. Now when theses assets are requested with an https domain request you still have the problem of serving theses assets. So the hardware load balancer should allow all theses assets url in the https domain and send them to the http://secure.abc.com virtualhosts (or any other static VH).
This sounds like you configured the rewritten URL as http://www.abc.com/css/merged.pagespeedxxx.css yourself - therefor: Try to use a protocol-relative URL, e.g. remove http: and just state //www.abc.com/css/merged.pagespeedxxx.css - this will use the same protocol as the embedding page was requested in.
One of the well standardized but relatively unknown features of URLs

Apache .htaccess whitelist doesn't block Tomcat with Mod_jk

My problem is, that I recently set up a Tomcat7 application container with Apache2.2 Frontend. As the project is still under development I am controlling access by an IP whitelist set up in .htaccess for the domain.
I set up mod_jk via AJP13 to Tomcat, it works absolutely fine, except the fact that .htaccess doesn't block the forward for Tomcat. In other words if you enter www.mydomain.com from a "black" IP, you get forwarded to the error page but if you enter www.mydomain.com/AppContext you slip through Apache into Tomcat
I started messing with urlrewritefilter with Tomcat, but for some reason it didn't work.
I am wondering if there is any way to set up .htaccess or apache instead to block requests forwarded to Tomcat similarly to request for Apache?
Also noticed a dramatic speed decrease when using it like that, us that common when using Apache as a frontend?
.htaccess files will work only when Apache is using a <Directory> based configuration (in httpd.conf). In case of mod_jk, matching requests (as specified by JkMount directive) will simply be forwarded to the AJP connector.
Use <Location> to control access instead:
<Location "/AppContext">
Order Deny,Allow
Deny from all
Allow from .myCompany.local
</Location>
See <Location> Directive> for details.
I faced the same problem and found a solution which may solve your case too.
Use a reverse proxy server like Nginx or Squid to redirect the traffic Apache Tomcat. Both of them can use htpassword for authentication and hence, will serve your need. If you want to use Apache as frontend then backend can be nginx which in turn will redirect to Tomcat after proper authentication. It may have a performance hit, though.
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-http-authentication-with-nginx-on-ubuntu-12-10

Tomcat serving URLs wrong with mod_proxy and apache

I've set up a host with apache to serve static pages and to use Tomcat to serve my web application (See this question). The static pages are server from
"http://myhost.com"
and the dynamic (tomcat) pages are server from
"http://myhost.com/myapp"
The mod_proxy makes sure the "http://myhost.com/myapp" are forwarded to tomcat server running on "http://myhost.com:8080".
The problem is that now you get the standard Tomcat introduction page on "http://myhost.com/myapp" but if you click on a local link (e.g. 'Status') on the left, it generates an URL
"http://myhost.com/manager/status" while it should generate: "http://myhost.com/myapp/manager/status"
(The same is true for webapps installed under tomcat)
What should be changed in my configuration (apache, tomcat?) to redirect my tomcat links to the right place?
Have you set the ProxyPassReverse setting in your httpd.conf. This will overwrite the HTTP Header an you'll get to the correct request on the side of tomcat.
Your URLs are mapped from:
http://myhost.com/myapp -> http://myhost.com:8080
This means that accessing the above URL will be mapped to the ROOT application in Tomcat. The ROOT application will generate pages that contain links from Tomcat's root context.
In other words, if you go to:
http://myhost.com:8080
you will get a page that contains links to
http://myhost.com:8080/manager/status
This link will work. However when that page is given back to a browser that requested it via Apache, the full URL then looks like: http://myhost.com/manager/status
I assume that you intend to deploy an application called 'myapp' to Tomcat? If that is the case the Tomcat URL for this app will be
http://myhost.com:8080/myapp
Which will also work be mapped correctly when accessed via Apache.
If you absolutely must access Tomcats root application in this way you'll have to rewrite the URLs it outputs in the pages it returns.
I've had the most success with mod_proxy_ajp. It requires mod_proxy, but works over ajp. Using it instead, your conf file looks similar
ProxyPass / ajp://localhost:8009/
See my similar question and also the answer to this question. The only fault in mod_proxy_ajp that I've found is that if I need to restart tomcat I have to force an apache restart too.