Reverse Proxy settings on OSX 10.10 and Server 4.1

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Reverse Proxy settings on OSX 10.10 and Server 4.1

Until a little while ago we've been hosting our websites on a Mac Mini Server running OSx 10.10 and Server 4.1 (ip 11.60.34.70). Our internet router is configured to send all port 80 internet traffic to this Mac Mini Server. This server is also the DNS server for the local network. So a request for www.ciyj.com would come in from the internet and be sent to 11.60.34.70 and the DNS server would do the same thing for any local network requests. Life was good.

Unfortunately we had to move all of our websites over to a different server (don't ask me why) also a Mac Mini (ip 10.60.34.75) running Apache and PHP but not running the full server software. I reconfigured the DNS on the Mini Server to send all local requests over to the new Mac Mini, I figured out how to set up virtual hosting on the Mac Mini as well and managed to get everything up and running on the the local network.

Now for the part I haven't been able to figure out, I don't want to reroute the port 80 traffic coming through our router to the Mac Mini because that messes up our webDAV and a few other services running on the Mini Server. After doing some research I think what I want to do is set up a reverse proxy on the Mini Server that sends the website requests over to the new server hosting our web sites. I just can't figure out how to do this on the Mac Mini Server. Are reverse proxys the best way to reroute the traffic through the Mini Server to the Mini now hosting the websites or is there a better way? Has anyone actually managed to set this up?

Thanks for your help.

Posted on Apr 29, 2015 5:15 PM

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Answer 1

Apr 30, 2015 2:01 AM in response to toddler1

Yes it sounds like a reverse proxy would help you out, however Apple no longer provide a (built-in) means to set one up in Server.app, you might be able to manually set one up in Apache but a better option would be to install a copy of Nginx and use that instead for your reverse-proxy server.

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Answer 2

toddler1 Author

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May 6, 2015 3:14 PM in response to John Lockwood

Thanks John, I ended up going "hard core" and setting it up manually in Apache. After a little research I found the "com.conf" file in the "sites folder" and added the following lines:

ProxyPass http://ciyj.com

ProxyPassReverse http://ciyj.com

Order allow,deny

Allow from all

</Location>

It sort of worked. I get redirected to the right index.html file, but I can't get to any of the file that have links off the index file. They are stored in the same folder as the index.html file so I'm not sure why it can't find them.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Todd

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