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Setting up a HTTP Gateway on Ubuntu 10.04

By admin | August 11, 2010

An HTTP gateway is one of the ways that one can host multiple sites using only one external IP. The way that it works is that the user requests the page from the gateway and specifies which host was requested. The gateway server then forwards the request to the appropriate web server, which then returns the result to the gateway server, and the gateway server returns the result transparently to the user. This is a much better way to do multiple domains without having to purchase additional static IP address for the purpose of hosting websites.

Prerequisites

Install packages apache2, libapache2-mod-proxy-html:

sudo apt-get install apache2 libapache2-mod-proxy-html

Process

  1. Enable the the Apache mod_proxy as it is not enabled by default:
    sudo a2enmod proxy_http
  2. Add a reverse proxy pass to the configuration. Open /etc/apache2/sites-available/default with your favourite text editor and add the following text:
    <VirtualHost *:80>
        <Proxy *>
         Order Deny,Allow
         Allow from all
        </Proxy>
    
     ServerName fooserver.example.com
    
     ProxyRequests Off
     ProxyPass / http://192.168.42.3/
     ProxyPassReverse / http://192.168.42.3/
    </VirtualHost>
    

    Replace fooserver.example.com with your own domain name, and replace 192.168.42.3 with the internal IP address of your server (keep the http:// portion).

  3. Restart Apache 2:
    sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart
  4. Using your hosting provider’s DNS tool, point your domain name (fooserver.example.com) to your public IP.
  5. You’re done! To test, visit your domain name and it should bring you the website on your internal server.

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Topics: Internet, Linux | 1 Comment »

One Response to “Setting up a HTTP Gateway on Ubuntu 10.04”

  1. Reverse proxy HTTPS with Apache at Compdigitec Labs Says:
    August 23rd, 2013 at 16:34

    […] procedure is mostly similar to the procedure with regular HTTP, but there are a few gimmicks involved […]

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