force https in WebFlow - apache

I have a grails application deployed on Tomcat7 and exposed by Apache2. The grails application respond on 8080 of the server the standard way but on Apache2 it is served to the user by https://
All works right except for a WebFlow controller. When the webflow redirect the user it change the https:// to http://
How I can force WebFlow to use https:// ?

Have you configured the Tomcat to be aware of the fact that it is behind an https reverse proxy? You should set scheme="https" and secure="true" on the Connector element in server.xml.
Also make sure your grails.serverURL in Config.groovy is the full https URL from the clients' point of view.

Related

apache redirect to SSL configured site

I am trying to setup a gitlab repository and I am quite new to the web server side of things. My setup is the following:
I have an apache server which is running my main website on port 8080.
I have the gitlab configured with SSL and Nginx and running on port 2443.
At the moment, the gitlab site can be accessed through https://www.example.com:2443.
What I would like to do is setup a redirect through my apache server where if someone comes to http://www.example.com/gitlab or https://www.example.com/gitlab, they get redirected to ``https://www.example.com:2443` (preferably without the web browser text field changing).
Could this be done easily with Apache? Also, since the redirect is to an SSL site, any special things we need to consider?
You can try adding the redirect directive to your Apache VirtualHosts (8080 and 443).
Redirect permanent /gitlab https://www.example.com:2443

How to override scheme and is_ssl in apache HTTP Server for mod_proxy_ajp

We are running Tomcat 7 behind a load balancer that works also as SSL terminator, and an Apache HTTP Server 2.4. The Apache connects to the Tomcat via mod_proxy_ajp.
For the application it is important that Tomcat is aware that the request is coming in via HTTPS and is thus secure. As e.g. this article recommends, it is common to configure this on the Tomcat's Connector using the attributes secure="true" and possibly scheme="https" proxyPort="443". While this works, it is inconvenient since we are using HTTP for some purposes as well, and thus we would need to set up two Tomcat connectors for this purpose. And it has a smell, since this way we basically tell Tomcat to override the wrong information it gets from the Apache HTTP Server that the request is HTTPS instead of HTTP, instead of telling the Apache that it should send the correct information on the protocol and secure status.
So my question: is it somehow possible to configure the Apache HTTP Server itself that it passes the correct information via the AJP protocol: that the request is received via HTTPS and is secure? The problem is that it doesn't know it's HTTPS, since there is a SSL terminator before it and the requests arrives via HTTP, as far as it is concerned. Can I tell the Apache somehow that it's actually HTTPS?
A partial solution seems to be to set the protocol on a ServerName directive in the virtual host in the Apache HTTP server:
ServerName https://whatever
This way any Location: headers in redirects seem to be rewritten to https in the Apache, but the Tomcat is still passed the wrong information via AJP.
I always thought that AJP transfers this information automagically - but I'm not using mod_proxy_ajp, rather mod_jk. It's one of the reasons why I much prefer AJP over HTTP (and proxying).
Might be worth to change the module/connection

GeoServer under https

i am using apache web server on localhost:80 and Geoserver served from tomcat on localhost:8080
I recently installed SSL certificate on apache and it works fine except for that i get the message that says i have insecure content which i thought they were GeoServer layers. So now I'm trying to enable SSL for GeoServer and have Openlayers content like htis https://example.org:8080/geoserver but still not sure what's the best approach to do that.
My suggestion:
Add a (reverse) proxy in Apache and configure your web application that is connects only to the Apache proxying the GeoServer.
ProxyPass "/geoserver" "http://localhost:8080/geoserver"
ProxyPassReverse "/geoserver" "http://localhost:8080/geoserver"
This way you only need to allow HTTPS in the firewall and nobody from outside will have the chance to reach GeoServers web interface unless you enable port 8080 on the firewall. Also see https://gis.stackexchange.com/q/4323/109339 for further details.
Please note that you should set the https://docs.geoserver.org/stable/en/user/configuration/globalsettings.html#proxy-base-url of GeoServer with the public reachable URL via your Apache, e.g. https://your-apache.com/geoserver - otherwise the absolute URLs generated from GeoServer in e.g. GetCapabilities start with http://localhost:8080/geoserver (which is not reachable anymore).
If you had not already Apache in use, I would recommend nginx.

How to get tomcat to send redirects as https urls when apache handles ssl

I'm a bit out of my depth here and nothing I have found quite addresses my problem. Si any and all suggestions are most welcome.
I've got tomcat6 running on CentOS 6.5 hidden behind an apache server (v2.2.15) and I am using Apache's mod_proxy to expose the tomcat webapps, which are running on port 8080. The tomcat hosts one production application and several development applications. On the apache side, both a Drupal site and the aforementioned tomcat production application are on the same domain and, thanks to rewrite rules, all requests to this domain are changed to https. The development sites are reached via subdomains and do not get re-written as https requests.
For the most part, this arrangement works fine. But parts of the tomcat apps are AJAX (calling a Java Struts 1.2 backend). Most of those requests are handled OK. But a few AJAX requests result in redirects (i.e., forward.setRedirect(true)) and that redirect is http (I guess because the container itself is not secure). As a result, I run into cross site scripting issues. I imagine I can use CORS headers to avoid the problem. But that seems like a hack. Is there a relatively painless way I can use to have tomcat send redirects back as https without making tomcat handle ssl directly?
Cris
You could configure the RemoteIpValve in Tomcat:
Another feature of this valve is to replace the apparent scheme
(http/https) and server port with the scheme presented by a proxy or a
load balancer via a request header (e.g. "X-Forwarded-Proto").
To configure Apache to forward the original protocol in the X-Forwarded-Proto header, add a RequestHeader directive in your Apache config, e.g.:
<VirtualHost *:443>
RequestHeader set X-Forwarded-Proto "https"
...
Note that in Tomcat 7, there is also a RemoteIpFilter.
You don't need to do anything special. It already works. Make sure you set the "redirectPort" in server.xml to Apache's HTTPS port, usually 443, and add the following to your <security-constraint> sections for resources you want secured by HTTPS:
<user-data-constraint>
<description>HTTPS</description>
<transport-guarantee>CONFIDENTIAL</transport-guarantee>
</‌​user-data-constraint>
Late to the game here but others may find this-- we had a similar setup and issue where everything worked fine until the application started using ajax posts which did redirects for the response. The fix was to use mod_header in apache to rewrite redirects using "Header edit Location"
http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_headers.html
Header edit Location ^http://www.example.com/ https://www.example.com/
This went unnoticed prior to the ajax redirects because the browser has no problem doing page level redirects to http (which apache would then redirect back to https). But the ajax cross-site prevention halts at the initial http missing out on that would then be redirected to https by a subsequent request.

SSL Certificates installed on my site. but still browser shows unsafe connection

I have installed ssl certificates on my site but the browsers still showing unsafe connection. However i can access a safe connection by using https:// before site url
If you want to force https you'll need to set that up.
As explained on the apache wiki the recommended method is to setup the http virtual host to redirect to the https virtual host. Alternatively, you can use mod_rewrite to redirect from http to https.