Apache HTTP Server Version 2.2
Description: | HTTP/1.1 proxy/gateway server |
---|---|
Status: | Extension |
Module Identifier: | proxy_module |
Source File: | mod_proxy.c |
Do not enable proxying with ProxyRequests
until you have secured your server. Open proxy servers are dangerous both to your
network and to the Internet at large.
This module implements a proxy/gateway for Apache. It implements
proxying capability for AJP13
(Apache JServe Protocol
version 1.3), FTP
, CONNECT
(for SSL),
HTTP/0.9
, HTTP/1.0
, and HTTP/1.1
.
The module can be configured to connect to other proxy modules for these
and other protocols.
Apache's proxy features are divided into several modules in
addition to mod_proxy
:
mod_proxy_http
, mod_proxy_ftp
,
mod_proxy_ajp
, mod_proxy_balancer
,
and mod_proxy_connect
. Thus, if you want to use
one or more of the particular proxy functions, load
mod_proxy
and the appropriate module(s)
into the server (either statically at compile-time or dynamically
via the LoadModule
directive).
In addition, extended features are provided by other modules.
Caching is provided by mod_cache
and related
modules. The ability to contact remote servers using the SSL/TLS
protocol is provided by the SSLProxy*
directives of
mod_ssl
. These additional modules will need
to be loaded and configured to take advantage of these features.
Apache can be configured in both a forward and reverse proxy (also known as gateway) mode.
An ordinary forward proxy is an intermediate server that sits between the client and the origin server. In order to get content from the origin server, the client sends a request to the proxy naming the origin server as the target and the proxy then requests the content from the origin server and returns it to the client. The client must be specially configured to use the forward proxy to access other sites.
A typical usage of a forward proxy is to provide Internet
access to internal clients that are otherwise restricted by a
firewall. The forward proxy can also use caching (as provided
by mod_cache
) to reduce network usage.
The forward proxy is activated using the ProxyRequests
directive. Because
forward proxies allow clients to access arbitrary sites through
your server and to hide their true origin, it is essential that
you secure your server so that only
authorized clients can access the proxy before activating a
forward proxy.
A reverse proxy (or gateway), by contrast, appears to the client just like an ordinary web server. No special configuration on the client is necessary. The client makes ordinary requests for content in the name-space of the reverse proxy. The reverse proxy then decides where to send those requests, and returns the content as if it was itself the origin.
A typical usage of a reverse proxy is to provide Internet users access to a server that is behind a firewall. Reverse proxies can also be used to balance load among several back-end servers, or to provide caching for a slower back-end server. In addition, reverse proxies can be used simply to bring several servers into the same URL space.
A reverse proxy is activated using the ProxyPass
directive or the
[P]
flag to the RewriteRule
directive. It is
not necessary to turn ProxyRequests
on in order to
configure a reverse proxy.
The examples below are only a very basic idea to help you get started. Please read the documentation on the individual directives.
In addition, if you wish to have caching enabled, consult
the documentation from mod_cache
.
ProxyRequests On
ProxyVia On
<Proxy *>
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
Allow from internal.example.com
</Proxy>
ProxyRequests Off
<Proxy *>
Order deny,allow
Allow from all
</Proxy>
ProxyPass /foo http://foo.example.com/bar
ProxyPassReverse /foo http://foo.example.com/bar
You can control who can access your proxy via the <Proxy>
control block as in
the following example:
<Proxy *>
Order Deny,Allow
Deny from all
Allow from 192.168.0
</Proxy>
For more information on access control directives, see
mod_authz_host
.
Strictly limiting access is essential if you are using a
forward proxy (using the ProxyRequests
directive).
Otherwise, your server can be used by any client to access
arbitrary hosts while hiding his or her true identity. This is
dangerous both for your network and for the Internet at large.
When using a reverse proxy (using the ProxyPass
directive with
ProxyRequests Off
), access control is less
critical because clients can only contact the hosts that you
have specifically configured.
If you're using the ProxyBlock
directive, hostnames' IP addresses are looked up
and cached during startup for later match test. This may take a few
seconds (or more) depending on the speed with which the hostname lookups
occur.
An Apache proxy server situated in an intranet needs to forward
external requests through the company's firewall (for this, configure
the ProxyRemote
directive
to forward the respective scheme to the firewall proxy).
However, when it has to
access resources within the intranet, it can bypass the firewall when
accessing hosts. The NoProxy
directive is useful for specifying which hosts belong to the intranet and
should be accessed directly.
Users within an intranet tend to omit the local domain name from their
WWW requests, thus requesting "http://somehost/" instead of
http://somehost.example.com/
. Some commercial proxy servers
let them get away with this and simply serve the request, implying a
configured local domain. When the ProxyDomain
directive is used and the server is configured for proxy service, Apache can return
a redirect response and send the client to the correct, fully qualified,
server address. This is the preferred method since the user's bookmark
files will then contain fully qualified hosts.
For circumstances where mod_proxy
is sending
requests to an origin server that doesn't properly implement
keepalives or HTTP/1.1, there are two environment variables that can force the
request to use HTTP/1.0 with no keepalive. These are set via the
SetEnv
directive.
These are the force-proxy-request-1.0
and
proxy-nokeepalive
notes.
<Location /buggyappserver/>
ProxyPass http://buggyappserver:7001/foo/
SetEnv force-proxy-request-1.0 1
SetEnv proxy-nokeepalive 1
</Location>
Some request methods such as POST include a request body.
The HTTP protocol requires that requests which include a body
either use chunked transfer encoding or send a
Content-Length
request header. When passing these
requests on to the origin server, mod_proxy_http
will always attempt to send the Content-Length
. But
if the body is large and the original request used chunked
encoding, then chunked encoding may also be used in the upstream
request. You can control this selection using environment variables. Setting
proxy-sendcl
ensures maximum compatibility with
upstream servers by always sending the
Content-Length
, while setting
proxy-sendchunked
minimizes resource usage by using
chunked encoding.
When acting in a reverse-proxy mode (using the ProxyPass
directive, for example),
mod_proxy_http
adds several request headers in
order to pass information to the origin server. These headers
are:
X-Forwarded-For
X-Forwarded-Host
Host
HTTP request header.X-Forwarded-Server
Be careful when using these headers on the origin server, since
they will contain more than one (comma-separated) value if the
original request already contained one of these headers. For
example, you can use %{X-Forwarded-For}i
in the log
format string of the origin server to log the original clients IP
address, but you may get more than one address if the request
passes through several proxies.
See also the ProxyPreserveHost
and ProxyVia
directives, which control
other request headers.
Description: | Ports that are allowed to CONNECT through the
proxy |
---|---|
Syntax: | AllowCONNECT port [port] ... |
Default: | AllowCONNECT 443 563 |
Context: | server config, virtual host |
Status: | Extension |
Module: | mod_proxy |
The AllowCONNECT
directive specifies a list
of port numbers to which the proxy CONNECT
method may
connect. Today's browsers use this method when a https
connection is requested and proxy tunneling over HTTP is in effect.
By default, only the default https port (443
) and the
default snews port (563
) are enabled. Use the
AllowCONNECT
directive to override this default and
allow connections to the listed ports only.
Note that you'll need to have mod_proxy_connect
present
in the server in order to get the support for the CONNECT
at
all.
Description: | Add a member to a load balancing group |
---|---|
Syntax: | BalancerMember [balancerurl] url [key=value [key=value ...]] |
Context: | directory |
Status: | Extension |
Module: | mod_proxy |
Compatibility: | BalancerMember is only available in Apache 2.2 and later. |
This directive adds a member to a load balancing group. It could be used
within a <Proxy balancer://...>
container
directive, and can take any of the key value pairs available to
ProxyPass
directives.
The balancerurl is only needed when not in <Proxy balancer://...>
container directive. It corresponds to the url of a balancer defined in
ProxyPass
directive.
Description: | Hosts, domains, or networks that will be connected to directly |
---|---|
Syntax: | NoProxy host [host] ... |
Context: | server config, virtual host |
Status: | Extension |
Module: | mod_proxy |
This directive is only useful for Apache proxy servers within
intranets. The NoProxy
directive specifies a
list of subnets, IP addresses, hosts and/or domains, separated by
spaces. A request to a host which matches one or more of these is
always served directly, without forwarding to the configured
ProxyRemote
proxy server(s).
ProxyRemote * http://firewall.example.com:81
NoProxy .example.com 192.168.112.0/21
The host arguments to the NoProxy
directive are one of the following type list:
A Domain is a partially qualified DNS domain name, preceded by a period. It represents a list of hosts which logically belong to the same DNS domain or zone (i.e., the suffixes of the hostnames are all ending in Domain).
.com .apache.org.
To distinguish Domains from Hostnames (both syntactically and semantically; a DNS domain can have a DNS A record, too!), Domains are always written with a leading period.
Domain name comparisons are done without regard to the case, and
Domains are always assumed to be anchored in the root of the
DNS tree, therefore two domains .ExAmple.com
and
.example.com.
(note the trailing period) are considered
equal. Since a domain comparison does not involve a DNS lookup, it is much
more efficient than subnet comparison.
A SubNet is a partially qualified internet address in numeric (dotted quad) form, optionally followed by a slash and the netmask, specified as the number of significant bits in the SubNet. It is used to represent a subnet of hosts which can be reached over a common network interface. In the absence of the explicit net mask it is assumed that omitted (or zero valued) trailing digits specify the mask. (In this case, the netmask can only be multiples of 8 bits wide.) Examples:
192.168
or 192.168.0.0
255.255.0.0
)192.168.112.0/21
192.168.112.0/21
with a netmask of 21
valid bits (also used in the form 255.255.248.0
)As a degenerate case, a SubNet with 32 valid bits is the equivalent to an IPAddr, while a SubNet with zero valid bits (e.g., 0.0.0.0/0) is the same as the constant _Default_, matching any IP address.
A IPAddr represents a fully qualified internet address in numeric (dotted quad) form. Usually, this address represents a host, but there need not necessarily be a DNS domain name connected with the address.
192.168.123.7
An IPAddr does not need to be resolved by the DNS system, so it can result in more effective apache performance.
A Hostname is a fully qualified DNS domain name which can be resolved to one or more IPAddrs via the DNS domain name service. It represents a logical host (in contrast to Domains, see above) and must be resolvable to at least one IPAddr (or often to a list of hosts with different IPAddrs).
prep.ai.example.com
www.apache.org
In many situations, it is more effective to specify an IPAddr in place of a Hostname since a DNS lookup can be avoided. Name resolution in Apache can take a remarkable deal of time when the connection to the name server uses a slow PPP link.
Hostname comparisons are done without regard to the case,
and Hostnames are always assumed to be anchored in the root
of the DNS tree, therefore two hosts WWW.ExAmple.com
and www.example.com.
(note the trailing period) are
considered equal.
Description: | Container for directives applied to proxied resources |
---|---|
Syntax: | <Proxy wildcard-url> ...</Proxy> |
Context: | server config, virtual host |
Status: | Extension |
Module: | mod_proxy |
Directives placed in <Proxy>
sections apply only to matching proxied content. Shell-style wildcards are
allowed.
For example, the following will allow only hosts in
yournetwork.example.com
to access content via your proxy
server:
<Proxy *>
Order Deny,Allow
Deny from all
Allow from yournetwork.example.com
</Proxy>
The following example will process all files in the foo
directory of example.com
through the INCLUDES
filter when they are sent through the proxy server:
<Proxy http://example.com/foo/*>
SetOutputFilter INCLUDES
</Proxy>
Description: | Determines how to handle bad header lines in a response |
---|---|
Syntax: | ProxyBadHeader IsError|Ignore|StartBody |
Default: | ProxyBadHeader IsError |
Context: | server config, virtual host |
Status: | Extension |
Module: | mod_proxy |
Compatibility: | Available in Apache 2.0.44 and later |
The ProxyBadHeader
directive determines the
behaviour of mod_proxy
if it receives syntactically invalid
header lines (i.e. containing no colon). The following arguments
are possible:
IsError
Ignore
StartBody
Description: | Words, hosts, or domains that are banned from being proxied |
---|---|
Syntax: | ProxyBlock *|word|host|domain
[word|host|domain] ... |
Context: | server config, virtual host |
Status: | Extension |
Module: | mod_proxy |
The ProxyBlock
directive specifies a list of
words, hosts and/or domains, separated by spaces. HTTP, HTTPS, and
FTP document requests to sites whose names contain matched words,
hosts or domains are blocked by the proxy server. The proxy
module will also attempt to determine IP addresses of list items which
may be hostnames during startup, and cache them for match test as
well. That may slow down the startup time of the server.
ProxyBlock joes-garage.com some-host.co.uk rocky.wotsamattau.edu
rocky.wotsamattau.edu
would also be matched if referenced by
IP address.
Note that wotsamattau
would also be sufficient to match
wotsamattau.edu
.
Note also that
ProxyBlock *
blocks connections to all sites.
Description: | Default domain name for proxied requests |
---|---|
Syntax: | ProxyDomain Domain |
Context: | server config, virtual host |
Status: | Extension |
Module: | mod_proxy |
This directive is only useful for Apache proxy servers within
intranets. The ProxyDomain
directive specifies
the default domain which the apache proxy server will belong to. If a
request to a host without a domain name is encountered, a redirection
response to the same host with the configured Domain appended
will be generated.
ProxyRemote * http://firewall.example.com:81
NoProxy .example.com 192.168.112.0/21
ProxyDomain .example.com
Description: | Override error pages for proxied content |
---|---|
Syntax: | ProxyErrorOverride On|Off |
Default: | ProxyErrorOverride Off |
Context: | server config, virtual host |
Status: | Extension |
Module: | mod_proxy |
Compatibility: | Available in version 2.0 and later |
This directive is useful for reverse-proxy setups, where you want to
have a common look and feel on the error pages seen by the end user.
This also allows for included files (via
mod_include
's SSI) to get
the error code and act accordingly (default behavior would display
the error page of the proxied server, turning this on shows the SSI
Error message).
This directive does not affect the processing of informational (1xx), normal success (2xx), or redirect (3xx) responses.
Description: | Define the character set for proxied FTP listings |
---|---|
Syntax: | ProxyFtpDirCharset character set |
Default: | ProxyFtpDirCharset ISO-8859-1 |
Context: | server config, virtual host, directory |
Status: | Extension |
Module: | mod_proxy |
Compatibility: | Available in Apache 2.2.7 and later |
The ProxyFtpDirCharset
directive defines the
character set to be set for FTP directory listings in HTML generated by
mod_proxy_ftp
.
Description: | Determine size of internal data throughput buffer |
---|---|
Syntax: | ProxyIOBufferSize bytes |
Default: | ProxyIOBufferSize 8192 |
Context: | server config, virtual host |
Status: | Extension |
Module: | mod_proxy |
The ProxyIOBufferSize
directive adjusts the size
of the internal buffer, which is used as a scratchpad for the data between
input and output. The size must be less or equal 8192
.
In almost every case there's no reason to change that value.
Description: | Container for directives applied to regular-expression-matched proxied resources |
---|---|
Syntax: | <ProxyMatch regex> ...</ProxyMatch> |
Context: | server config, virtual host |
Status: | Extension |
Module: | mod_proxy |
The <ProxyMatch>
directive is
identical to the <Proxy>
directive, except it matches URLs
using regular expressions.
Description: | Maximium number of proxies that a request can be forwarded through |
---|---|
Syntax: | ProxyMaxForwards number |
Default: | ProxyMaxForwards -1 |
Context: | server config, virtual host |
Status: | Extension |
Module: | mod_proxy |
Compatibility: | Available in Apache 2.0 and later; default behaviour changed in 2.2.7 |
The ProxyMaxForwards
directive specifies the
maximum number of proxies through which a request may pass, if there's no
Max-Forwards
header supplied with the request. This may
be set to prevent infinite proxy loops, or a DoS attack.
ProxyMaxForwards 15
Note that setting ProxyMaxForwards
is a
violation of the HTTP/1.1 protocol (RFC2616), which forbids a Proxy
setting Max-Forwards
if the Client didn't set it.
Earlier Apache versions would always set it. A negative
ProxyMaxForwards
value, including the
default -1, gives you protocol-compliant behaviour, but may
leave you open to loops.
Description: | Maps remote servers into the local server URL-space |
---|---|
Syntax: | ProxyPass [path] !|url [key=value
key=value ...]] [nocanon] [interpolate] |
Context: | server config, virtual host, directory |
Status: | Extension |
Module: | mod_proxy |
This directive allows remote servers to be mapped into the space of the local server; the local server does not act as a proxy in the conventional sense, but appears to be a mirror of the remote server. The local server is often called a reverse proxy or gateway. The path is the name of a local virtual path; url is a partial URL for the remote server and cannot include a query string.
ProxyRequests
directive should
usually be set off when using
ProxyPass
.Suppose the local server has address http://example.com/
;
then
ProxyPass /mirror/foo/ http://backend.example.com/
will cause a local request for
http://example.com/mirror/foo/bar
to be internally converted
into a proxy request to http://backend.example.com/bar
.
If the first argument ends with a trailing /, the second argument should also end with a trailing / and vice versa. Otherwise the resulting requests to the backend may miss some needed slashes and do not deliver the expected results.
The !
directive is useful in situations where you don't want
to reverse-proxy a subdirectory, e.g.
ProxyPass /mirror/foo/i !
ProxyPass /mirror/foo http://backend.example.com
will proxy all requests to /mirror/foo
to
backend.example.com
except requests made to
/mirror/foo/i
.
Order is important: exclusions must come before the
general ProxyPass
directive.
As of Apache 2.1, the ability to use pooled connections to a backend
server is available. Using the key=value
parameters it is
possible to tune this connection pooling. The default for a Hard
Maximum
for the number of connections is the number of threads per
process in the active MPM. In the Prefork MPM, this is always 1, while with
the Worker MPM it is controlled by the
ThreadsPerChild
.
Setting min
will determine how many connections will always
be open to the backend server. Upto the Soft Maximum or smax
number of connections will be created on demand. Any connections above
smax
are subject to a time to live or ttl
. Apache
will never create more than the Hard Maximum or max
connections
to the backend server.
ProxyPass /example http://backend.example.com smax=5 max=20 ttl=120 retry=300
Parameter | Default | Description |
---|---|---|
min | 0 | Minimum number of connections that will always be open to the backend server. |
max | 1...n | Hard Maximum number of connections that will be
allowed to the backend server. The default for a Hard Maximum
for the number of connections is the number of threads per process in the
active MPM. In the Prefork MPM, this is always 1, while with the Worker MPM
it is controlled by the ThreadsPerChild .
Apache will never create more than the Hard Maximum connections
to the backend server. |
smax | max | Upto the Soft Maximum
number of connections will be created on demand. Any connections above
smax are subject to a time to live or ttl .
|
acquire | - | If set this will be the maximum time to wait for a free
connection in the connection pool, in milliseconds. If there are no free
connections in the pool the Apache will return SERVER_BUSY
status to the client.
|
connectiontimeout | timeout | Connect timeout in seconds. The number of seconds Apache waits for the creation of a connection to the backend to complete. By adding a postfix of ms the timeout can be also set in milliseconds. |
disablereuse | Off | This parameter should be used when you want to force mod_proxy
to immediately close a connection to the backend after being used, and
thus, disable its persistent connection and pool for that backend.
This helps in various situations where a firewall between Apache and
the backend server (regardless of protocol) tends to silently
drop connections or when backends themselves may be under round-
robin DNS. To disable connection pooling reuse,
set this property value to On .
|
flushpackets | off | Determines whether the proxy module will auto-flush the output brigade after each "chunk" of data. 'off' means that it will flush only when needed, 'on' means after each chunk is sent and 'auto' means poll/wait for a period of time and flush if no input has been received for 'flushwait' milliseconds. Currently this is in effect only for AJP. |
flushwait | 10 | The time to wait for additional input, in milliseconds, before flushing the output brigade if 'flushpackets' is 'auto'. |
keepalive | Off | This parameter should be used when you have a firewall between your
Apache and the backend server, who tend to drop inactive connections.
This flag will tell the Operating System to send KEEP_ALIVE
messages on inactive connections (interval depends on global OS settings,
generally 120ms), and thus prevent the firewall to drop the connection.
To enable keepalive set this property value to On .
|
lbset | 0 | Sets the load balancer cluster set that the worker is a member of. The load balancer will try all members of a lower numbered lbset before trying higher numbered ones. |
ping | 0 | Ping property tells webserver to send a CPING
request on ajp13 connection before forwarding a request.
The parameter is the delay in seconds to wait for the
CPONG reply.
This features has been added to avoid problem with hung and
busy Tomcat's and require ajp13 ping/pong support which has
been implemented on Tomcat 3.3.2+, 4.1.28+ and 5.0.13+.
This will increase the network traffic during the normal operation
which could be an issue, but it will lower the
traffic in case some of the cluster nodes are down or busy.
Currently this has an effect only for AJP.
By adding a postfix of ms the delay can be also set in
milliseconds.
|
loadfactor | 1 | Worker load factor. Used with BalancerMember. It is a number between 1 and 100 and defines the normalized weighted load applied to the worker. |
redirect | - | Redirection Route of the worker. This value is usually set dynamically to enable safe removal of the node from the cluster. If set all requests without session id will be redirected to the BalancerMember that has route parametar equal as this value. |
retry | 60 | Connection pool worker retry timeout in seconds. If the connection pool worker to the backend server is in the error state, Apache will not forward any requests to that server until the timeout expires. This enables to shut down the backend server for maintenance, and bring it back online later. A value of 0 means always retry workers in an error state with no timeout. |
route | - | Route of the worker when used inside load balancer. The route is a value appended to session id. |
status | - | Single letter value defining the initial status of this worker: 'D' is disabled, 'S' is stopped, 'I' is ignore-errors, 'H' is hot-standby and 'E' is in an error state. Status can be set (which is the default) by prepending with '+' or cleared by prepending with '-'. Thus, a setting of 'S-E' sets this worker to Stopped and clears the in-error flag. |
timeout | ProxyTimeout |
Connection timeout in seconds. The number of seconds Apache waits for data sent by / to the backend. |
ttl | - | Time To Live for the inactive connections above the
smax connections in seconds. Apache will close all
connections that has not been used inside that time period.
|
If the Proxy directive scheme starts with the
balancer://
(eg: balancer://cluster/
,
any path information is ignored) then a virtual worker that does not really
communicate with the backend server will be created. Instead it is responsible
for the management of several "real" workers. In that case the special set of
parameters can be add to this virtual worker. See mod_proxy_balancer
for more information about how the balancer works.
Parameter | Default | Description |
---|---|---|
lbmethod | byrequests | Balancer load-balance method. Select the load-balancing scheduler
method to use. Either byrequests , to perform weighted
request counting, bytraffic , to perform weighted
traffic byte count balancing, or bybusyness , to perform
pending request balancing. Default is byrequests .
|
maxattempts | 1 | Maximum number of failover attempts before giving up. |
nofailover | Off | If set to On the session will break if the worker is in
error state or disabled. Set this value to On if backend servers do not
support session replication.
|
stickysession | - | Balancer sticky session name. The value is usually set to something
like JSESSIONID or PHPSESSIONID ,
and it depends on the backend application server that support sessions.
If the backend application server uses different name for cookies
and url encoded id (like servlet containers) use | to to separate them.
The first part is for the cookie the second for the path.
|
scolonpathdelim | Off | If set to On the semi-colon character ';' will be
used as an additional sticky session path deliminator/separator. This
is mainly used to emulate mod_jk's behavior when dealing with paths such
as JSESSIONID=6736bcf34;foo=aabfa
|
timeout | 0 | Balancer timeout in seconds. If set this will be the maximum time to wait for a free worker. Default is not to wait. |
A sample balancer setup
ProxyPass /special-area http://special.example.com smax=5 max=10
ProxyPass / balancer://mycluster/ stickysession=JSESSIONID|jsessionid nofailover=On
<Proxy balancer://mycluster>
BalancerMember http://1.2.3.4:8009
BalancerMember http://1.2.3.5:8009 smax=10
# Less powerful server, don't send as many requests there
BalancerMember http://1.2.3.6:8009 smax=1 loadfactor=20
</Proxy>
Setting up a hot-standby, that will only be used if no other members are available
ProxyPass / balancer://hotcluster/
<Proxy balancer://hotcluster>
BalancerMember http://1.2.3.4:8009 loadfactor=1
BalancerMember http://1.2.3.5:8009 loadfactor=2
# The below is the hot standby
BalancerMember http://1.2.3.6:8009 status=+H
ProxySet lbmethod=bytraffic
</Proxy>
Normally, mod_proxy will canonicalise ProxyPassed URLs. But this may be incompatible with some backends, particularly those that make use of PATH_INFO. The optional nocanon keyword suppresses this, and passes the URL path "raw" to the backend. Note that may affect the security of your backend, as it removes the normal limited protection against URL-based attacks provided by the proxy.
The optional interpolate keyword (available in
httpd 2.2.9 and later), in combination with
ProxyPassInterpolateEnv
causes the ProxyPass
to interpolate environment variables, using the syntax
${VARNAME}. Note that many of the standard CGI-derived
environment variables will not exist when this interpolation happens,
so you may still have to resort to mod_rewrite
for complex rules.
When used inside a <Location>
section, the first argument is omitted and the local
directory is obtained from the <Location>
.
If you require a more flexible reverse-proxy configuration, see the
RewriteRule
directive with the
[P]
flag.
Description: | Enable Environment Variable interpolation in Reverse Proxy configurations |
---|---|
Syntax: | ProxyPassInterpolateEnv On|Off |
Default: | ProxyPassInterpolateEnv Off |
Context: | server config, virtual host, directory |
Status: | Extension |
Module: | mod_proxy |
Compatibility: | Available in httpd 2.2.9 and later |
This directive, together with the interpolate argument to
ProxyPass
, ProxyPassReverse
,
ProxyPassReverseCookieDomain
and
ProxyPassReverseCookiePath
enables reverse proxies to be dynamically
configured using environment variables, which may be set by
another module such as mod_rewrite
.
It affects the ProxyPass
,
ProxyPassReverse
,
ProxyPassReverseCookieDomain
, and
ProxyPassReverseCookiePath
directives,
and causes them to substitute the value of an environment
variable varname
for the string ${varname}
in configuration directives.
Keep this turned off (for server performance) unless you need it!
Description: | Maps remote servers into the local server URL-space using regular expressions |
---|---|
Syntax: | ProxyPassMatch [regex] !|url [key=value
[key=value ...]] |
Context: | server config, virtual host, directory |
Status: | Extension |
Module: | mod_proxy |
Compatibility: | available in Apache 2.2.5 and later |
This directive is equivalent to ProxyPass
,
but makes use of regular expressions, instead of simple prefix matching. The
supplied regular expression is matched against the url, and if it
matches, the server will substitute any parenthesized matches into the given
string and use it as a new url.
Suppose the local server has address http://example.com/
;
then
ProxyPassMatch ^(/.*\.gif)$ http://backend.example.com$1
will cause a local request for
http://example.com/foo/bar.gif
to be internally converted
into a proxy request to http://backend.example.com/foo/bar.gif
.
The URL argument must be parsable as a URL before regexp substitutions (as well as after). This limits the matches you can use. For instance, if we had used
ProxyPassMatch ^(/.*\.gif)$ http://backend.example.com:8000$1
in our previous example, it would fail with a syntax error at server startup. This is a bug (PR 46665 in the ASF bugzilla), and the workaround is to reformulate the match:
ProxyPassMatch ^/(.*\.gif)$ http://backend.example.com:8000/$1
The !
directive is useful in situations where you don't want
to reverse-proxy a subdirectory.
Description: | Adjusts the URL in HTTP response headers sent from a reverse proxied server |
---|---|
Syntax: | ProxyPassReverse [path] url
[interpolate] |
Context: | server config, virtual host, directory |
Status: | Extension |
Module: | mod_proxy |
This directive lets Apache adjust the URL in the Location
,
Content-Location
and URI
headers on HTTP
redirect responses. This is essential when Apache is used as a
reverse proxy (or gateway) to avoid by-passing the reverse proxy
because of HTTP redirects on the backend servers which stay behind
the reverse proxy.
Only the HTTP response headers specifically mentioned above will be rewritten. Apache will not rewrite other response headers, nor will it rewrite URL references inside HTML pages. This means that if the proxied content contains absolute URL references, they will by-pass the proxy. A third-party module that will look inside the HTML and rewrite URL references is Nick Kew's mod_proxy_html.
path is the name of a local virtual path. url is a
partial URL for the remote server - the same way they are used for the
ProxyPass
directive.
For example, suppose the local server has address
http://example.com/
; then
ProxyPass /mirror/foo/ http://backend.example.com/
ProxyPassReverse /mirror/foo/ http://backend.example.com/
ProxyPassReverseCookieDomain backend.example.com public.example.com
ProxyPassReverseCookiePath / /mirror/foo/
will not only cause a local request for the
http://example.com/mirror/foo/bar
to be internally converted
into a proxy request to http://backend.example.com/bar
(the functionality ProxyPass
provides here). It also takes care
of redirects the server backend.example.com
sends: when
http://backend.example.com/bar
is redirected by him to
http://backend.example.com/quux
Apache adjusts this to
http://example.com/mirror/foo/quux
before forwarding the HTTP
redirect response to the client. Note that the hostname used for
constructing the URL is chosen in respect to the setting of the UseCanonicalName
directive.
Note that this ProxyPassReverse
directive can
also be used in conjunction with the proxy pass-through feature
(RewriteRule ... [P]
) from mod_rewrite
because it doesn't depend on a corresponding ProxyPass
directive.
The optional interpolate keyword (available in
httpd 2.2.9 and later), used together with
ProxyPassInterpolateEnv
, enables interpolation
of environment variables specified using the format ${VARNAME}.
When used inside a <Location>
section, the first argument is omitted and the local
directory is obtained from the <Location>
.
Description: | Adjusts the Domain string in Set-Cookie headers from a reverse- proxied server |
---|---|
Syntax: | ProxyPassReverseCookieDomain internal-domain
public-domain [interpolate] |
Context: | server config, virtual host, directory |
Status: | Extension |
Module: | mod_proxy |
Usage is basically similar to
ProxyPassReverse
, but instead of
rewriting headers that are a URL, this rewrites the domain
string in Set-Cookie
headers.
Description: | Adjusts the Path string in Set-Cookie headers from a reverse- proxied server |
---|---|
Syntax: | ProxyPassReverseCookiePath internal-path
public-path [interpolate] |
Context: | server config, virtual host, directory |
Status: | Extension |
Module: | mod_proxy |
Usage is basically similar to
ProxyPassReverse
, but instead of
rewriting headers that are a URL, this rewrites the path
string in Set-Cookie
headers.
Description: | Use incoming Host HTTP request header for proxy request |
---|---|
Syntax: | ProxyPreserveHost On|Off |
Default: | ProxyPreserveHost Off |
Context: | server config, virtual host |
Status: | Extension |
Module: | mod_proxy |
Compatibility: | Available in Apache 2.0.31 and later. |
When enabled, this option will pass the Host: line from the incoming
request to the proxied host, instead of the hostname specified in the
ProxyPass
line.
This option should normally be turned Off
. It is mostly
useful in special configurations like proxied mass name-based virtual
hosting, where the original Host header needs to be evaluated by the
backend server.
Description: | Network buffer size for proxied HTTP and FTP connections |
---|---|
Syntax: | ProxyReceiveBufferSize bytes |
Default: | ProxyReceiveBufferSize 0 |
Context: | server config, virtual host |
Status: | Extension |
Module: | mod_proxy |
The ProxyReceiveBufferSize
directive specifies an
explicit (TCP/IP) network buffer size for proxied HTTP and FTP connections,
for increased throughput. It has to be greater than 512
or set
to 0
to indicate that the system's default buffer size should
be used.
ProxyReceiveBufferSize 2048
Description: | Remote proxy used to handle certain requests |
---|---|
Syntax: | ProxyRemote match remote-server |
Context: | server config, virtual host |
Status: | Extension |
Module: | mod_proxy |
This defines remote proxies to this proxy. match is either the
name of a URL-scheme that the remote server supports, or a partial URL
for which the remote server should be used, or *
to indicate
the server should be contacted for all requests. remote-server is
a partial URL for the remote server. Syntax:
remote-server =
scheme://hostname[:port]
scheme is effectively the protocol that should be used to
communicate with the remote server; only http
and https
are supported by this module. When using https
, the requests
are forwarded through the remote proxy using the HTTP CONNECT method.
ProxyRemote http://goodguys.example.com/ http://mirrorguys.example.com:8000
ProxyRemote * http://cleverproxy.localdomain
ProxyRemote ftp http://ftpproxy.mydomain:8080
In the last example, the proxy will forward FTP requests, encapsulated as yet another HTTP proxy request, to another proxy which can handle them.
This option also supports reverse proxy configuration - a backend webserver can be embedded within a virtualhost URL space even if that server is hidden by another forward proxy.
Description: | Remote proxy used to handle requests matched by regular expressions |
---|---|
Syntax: | ProxyRemoteMatch regex remote-server |
Context: | server config, virtual host |
Status: | Extension |
Module: | mod_proxy |
The ProxyRemoteMatch
is identical to the
ProxyRemote
directive, except the
first argument is a regular expression
match against the requested URL.
Description: | Enables forward (standard) proxy requests |
---|---|
Syntax: | ProxyRequests On|Off |
Default: | ProxyRequests Off |
Context: | server config, virtual host |
Status: | Extension |
Module: | mod_proxy |
This allows or prevents Apache from functioning as a forward proxy
server. (Setting ProxyRequests to Off
does not disable use of
the ProxyPass
directive.)
In a typical reverse proxy or gateway configuration, this
option should be set to
Off
.
In order to get the functionality of proxying HTTP or FTP sites, you
need also mod_proxy_http
or mod_proxy_ftp
(or both) present in the server.
Do not enable proxying with ProxyRequests
until you have secured your server. Open proxy servers are dangerous
both to your network and to the Internet at large.
Description: | Set various Proxy balancer or member parameters |
---|---|
Syntax: | ProxySet url key=value [key=value ...] |
Context: | directory |
Status: | Extension |
Module: | mod_proxy |
Compatibility: | ProxySet is only available in Apache 2.2 and later. |
This directive is used as an alternate method of setting any of the
parameters available to Proxy balancers and workers normally done via the
ProxyPass
directive. If used
within a <Proxy balancer url|worker url>
container directive, the url argument is not required. As a side
effect the respective balancer or worker gets created. This can be useful
when doing reverse proxying via a
RewriteRule
instead of a
ProxyPass
directive.
<Proxy balancer://hotcluster>
BalancerMember http://www2.example.com:8009 loadfactor=1
BalancerMember http://www3.example.com:8009 loadfactor=2
ProxySet lbmethod=bytraffic
</Proxy>
<Proxy http://backend>
ProxySet keepalive=On
</Proxy>
ProxySet balancer://foo lbmethod=bytraffic timeout=15
ProxySet ajp://backend:7001 timeout=15
Keep in mind that the same parameter key can have a different meaning depending whether it is applied to a balancer or a worker as shown by the two examples above regarding timeout.
Description: | Show Proxy LoadBalancer status in mod_status |
---|---|
Syntax: | ProxyStatus Off|On|Full |
Default: | ProxyStatus Off |
Context: | server config, virtual host |
Status: | Extension |
Module: | mod_proxy |
Compatibility: | Available in version 2.2 and later |
This directive determines whether or not proxy
loadbalancer status data is displayed via the mod_status
server-status page.
Full is synonymous with On
Description: | Network timeout for proxied requests |
---|---|
Syntax: | ProxyTimeout seconds |
Default: | Value of |
Context: | server config, virtual host |
Status: | Extension |
Module: | mod_proxy |
Compatibility: | Available in Apache 2.0.31 and later |
This directive allows a user to specifiy a timeout on proxy requests. This is useful when you have a slow/buggy appserver which hangs, and you would rather just return a timeout and fail gracefully instead of waiting however long it takes the server to return.
Description: | Information provided in the Via HTTP response
header for proxied requests |
---|---|
Syntax: | ProxyVia On|Off|Full|Block |
Default: | ProxyVia Off |
Context: | server config, virtual host |
Status: | Extension |
Module: | mod_proxy |
This directive controls the use of the Via:
HTTP
header by the proxy. Its intended use is to control the flow of
proxy requests along a chain of proxy servers. See RFC 2616 (HTTP/1.1), section
14.45 for an explanation of Via:
header lines.
Off
, which is the default, no special processing
is performed. If a request or reply contains a Via:
header,
it is passed through unchanged.On
, each request and reply will get a
Via:
header line added for the current host.Full
, each generated Via:
header
line will additionally have the Apache server version shown as a
Via:
comment field.Block
, every proxy request will have all its
Via:
header lines removed. No new Via:
header will
be generated.