How do I run Node.js on port 80? - apache

Question

My aim is to run Node.js on port 80. This is because I am finding node.js is being blocked from certain networks which do not allow traffic from any other port.
It appears that the best way to do this is by proxying Apache through Node.js. I have tried using node-http-proxy to do this but I have not had any luck.
The code I am using is here:
var util = require('util'),
http = require('http'),
httpProxy = require('http-proxy');
httpProxy.createServer(9000, 'localhost').listen(80);
http.createServer(function (req, res) {
res.writeHead(200, { 'Content-Type': 'text/plain' });
res.write('request successfully proxied to: ' + req.url + '\n' + JSON.stringify(req.headers, true, 2));
res.end();
}).listen(9000);
But I keep getting the error "Address in use" for port 80. I must be doing something wrong.
How do I proxy Apache through node.js using node-http-proxy? Will this enable me to run node.js on port 80? And is node-http-proxy the best way to achieve this?
Thank you.

Answer 1

run your app on a high port 8080 or whatev then
sudo iptables -A PREROUTING -t nat -i eth0 -p tcp --dport 80 -j REDIRECT --to-port 8080
If you are not using ngnix or apache

Answer 2

The simplest solution: safely configure your node app to run on port 80.
sudo apt-get install libcap2-bin
sudo setcap cap_net_bind_service=+ep /path/to/node
Ta da! You're done.
Why do I like it?
You don't have to use apache or nginx
You don't have to run your application as root
You won't have to forward ports (and handle that each time your machine boots)
Reference Link: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-pm2-to-setup-a-node-js-production-environment-on-an-ubuntu-vps (A great article on how to set up your node app on cloud hosting).

Answer 3

What you need to do is have 2 ip's for the server you are running. Apache has 1 ip bound to port 80 and then node.js has the other ip bound to port 80.
Using node and its listen directive has 2 values eg. .listen(80, NODEJS_IP or DNS NAME);
Some other advice.
I would not use apache with nodejs as it's not evented. So this really isn't recommended. I would actually look into using NGINX as its a much better pairing with Node.

Answer 4

It is currently not recommended to run node on port 80, as that requires running node as root.
How attached are you to apache? Proxying node through nginx is a tried and true solution, with an nginx-config such as this:
upstream node_cluster {
ip_hash;
server 127.0.0.1:8000;
server 127.0.0.1:8001;
server 127.0.0.1:8002;
}
server {
listen 0.0.0.0:80;
server_name foo;
access_log /var/log/nginx/foo.log;
location / {
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
proxy_pass http://node_cluster/;
proxy_redirect off;
}
}
Nginx documentation:
http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpProxyModule
http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpUpstreamModule

Answer 5

Your code looks like example code in which you're creating a Node-based proxy from port 80 to port 9000, and then creating a Node-based HTTP server on port 9000. (i.e. Node:80 -> Node:9000)
You are getting "address in use" when you launch Node because Apache is already using port 80. If you want to use Apache to proxy, you must use Node on a different port (say 9000) and have Apache listening on port 80 and forwarding the requests to Node on port 9000. (i.e. Apache:80 -> Node:9000)
It looks like the library you're using is for doing the opposite: using Node as the proxy and forwarding requests to Apache. In this case you must configure Apache to run on another port than port 80. (i.e. Node:80 -> Apache:9000).
Are you wanting to do Node:80 -> Apache:9000 or Apache:9000 -> Node:80, in the end?
EDIT after comments:
If you want to do Apache:80 -> Node:9000, you can use mod_proxy on Apache and use the ProxyPass/ProxyPassReverse directives, something like
ProxyPass /nodeurls/ http://localhost:9000/
ProxyPassReverse /nodeurls/ http://localhost:9000/
where nodeurls is the family of URLs you wish for Apache to forward to Node.

Answer 6

If you are a non-root user, you cannot run or bind with ports lower than 1024 (in Unix system). To allow non-root user can run node on port lower than 1024 use this command.
$ sudo setcap 'cap_net_bind_service=+ep' $(which node)

Answer 7

I was having the same issue, here is how I resolved it using node-http-proxy to listen on port 80, then forward to either express or apache.
https://stackoverflow.com/a/9645091/500270

Answer 8

I had the same issue, I just changed my port to 8080 and it worked.
httpsServer.listen(8080, () =>
console.log(chalk.rgb(208, 60, 240)(`Server listening on port: 8080`))
);

Answer 9

if you just in develop environment mode
you can su root, then
node index.js or ./node_modules/coffee-script/bin/coffee index.coffee