redirect in Apache

baslemmens · 08-31-2004, 04:01 PM

Hello Boys and girls. Please help me out.

I want to do the following: on one machine i have running apache accesible to the internet.
Within my network I have a mailserver with webaccess. Both my external website and my internal webmail works fine.

Now comes the following I do not want to make my webmail accessible via the apache external website.
I have made a dns record pointing to external ip address (tested ok) and in httpd.conf I have made a virtual host and it's redirecting to internal machine's hostname.

Now this works fine from inside network but from internet it is looking for the internal address on the internet, this of course does not work.

Do you have any ideas on this?

Thanks Bas

This is my part of httpd.conf:
<VirtualHost *>
ServerName exchange.yy.com
ServerAdmin postmaster@yy.com

Redirect / http://hostname/exchange

</VirtualHost>

Cedrik · 08-31-2004, 04:35 PM

I dont know if you have php enabled, but for my part I would do an index.php file in the document root of exchange.yy.com like :

PHP Code:


			
header('Location: h t t p : / / '.$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'].'/exchange');

€dit : I had to make spaces in http:// word to get code display without tags

littleking · 08-31-2004, 05:17 PM

is the hostname a valid hostname that is registered in dns? if not, then nobody from the internet will be able to see it.

baslemmens · 08-31-2004, 06:24 PM

i thought it may be possible to let apache get the data from the internal network and present it to the internet.
With some kind of virtual host setting to do this for me.

The Internal webserver only has internal ip address and internal domain resolving.

bas

angrybeaver · 08-31-2004, 07:01 PM

If you're trying to do what I think you're trying to do, you could setup apache as a reverse proxy.

From the mod_proxy documentation ...

Quote:

A reverse proxy, 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.

baslemmens · 09-01-2004, 12:08 PM

Hello Beaver,

Indeed what you're saying is very much alike what I had in mind.
Just from outside 1 machine availlable and redirecting requests to separate webservers and thus lowering risk of security breach.

Thanks, when I get home I go and check the apache.org website.

Thanks!

Bas

baslemmens · 09-02-2004, 01:07 PM

For the ones who would like to know about Reverse Proxies, I found valuable information:

http://www.apacheweek.com/features/reverseproxies

Cheers Bas