Apache Module mod_proxy

AllowCONNECT Directive

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.

NoProxy 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).

The host arguments to the NoProxy directive are one of the following type list:

Domain

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).

Examples

.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.

Note

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 .MyDomain.com and .mydomain.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.

SubNet

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

the subnet 192.168.0.0 with an implied netmask of 16 valid bits (sometimes used in the netmask form 255.255.0.0)

192.168.112.0/21

the subnet 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.

IPAddr

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.

Example

192.168.123.7

Note

An IPAddr does not need to be resolved by the DNS system, so it can result in more effective apache performance.

Hostname

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).

Examples

prep.ai.mit.edu
www.apache.org

Note

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.MyDomain.com and www.mydomain.com. (note the trailing period) are considered equal.

See also

• DNS Issues

<Proxy> Directive

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:

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:

ProxyBadHeader Directive

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

Abort the request and end up with a 502 (Bad Gateway) response. This is the default behaviour.

Ignore

Treat bad header lines as if they weren't sent.

StartBody

When receiving the first bad header line, finish reading the headers and treat the remainder as body. This helps to work around buggy backend servers which forget to insert an empty line between the headers and the body.

ProxyBlock Directive

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.

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

blocks connections to all sites.

ProxyDomain Directive

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.

ProxyErrorOverride Directive

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).

ProxyIOBufferSize Directive

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.

<ProxyMatch> Directive

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.

ProxyMaxForwards Directive

Description:	Maximium number of proxies that a request can be forwarded through
Syntax:	ProxyMaxForwards number
Default:	ProxyMaxForwards 10
Context:	server config, virtual host
Status:	Extension
Module:	mod_proxy
Compatibility:	Available in Apache 2.0 and later

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 is set to prevent infinite proxy loops, or a DoS attack.

ProxyPass Directive

Description:	Maps remote servers into the local server URL-space
Syntax:	ProxyPass [path] !|url [key=value key=value ...]]
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. path is the name of a local virtual path; url is a partial URL for the remote server and cannot include a query string.

Suppose the local server has address http://example.com/; then

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.

The ! directive is useful in situations where you don't want to reverse-proxy a subdirectory, e.g.

will proxy all requests to /mirror/foo to backend.example.com except requests made to /mirror/foo/i.

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.

Parameter	Default	Description
min	0	Minumum 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. If there are no free connections in the pool the Apache will return SERVER_BUSY status to the client.
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.
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.
route	-	Route of the worker when used inside load balancer. The route is a value appended to seesion id.
status	-	Single letter value defining the initial status of this worker: 'D' is disabled, 'S' is stopped, '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	Timeout	Connection timeout in seconds. If not set the Apache will wait until the free connection is available. This directive is used for limiting the number of connections to the backend server together with max parameter.
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:// 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 or bytraffic, to perform weighted traffic byte count 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.
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

Setting up a hot-standby, that will only be used if no other members are available

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.

ProxyPassReverse Directive

Description:	Adjusts the URL in HTTP response headers sent from a reverse proxied server
Syntax:	ProxyPassReverse [path] url
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 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

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.

When used inside a <Location> section, the first argument is omitted and the local directory is obtained from the <Location>.

ProxyPassReverseCookieDomain Directive

Description:	Adjusts the Domain string in Set-Cookie headers from a reverse- proxied server
Syntax:	ProxyPassReverseCookieDomain internal-domain public-domain
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.

ProxyPassReverseCookiePath Directive

Description:	Adjusts the Path string in Set-Cookie headers from a reverse- proxied server
Syntax:	ProxyPassReverseCookiePath internal-path public-path
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.

ProxyPreserveHost Directive

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.

ProxyReceiveBufferSize Directive

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.

ProxyRemote Directive

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:

scheme is effectively the protocol that should be used to communicate with the remote server; only http is supported by this module.

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.

ProxyRemoteMatch Directive

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.

ProxyRequests Directive

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 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.

ProxyTimeout Directive

Description:	Network timeout for proxied requests
Syntax:	ProxyTimeout seconds
Default:	ProxyTimeout 300
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.

ProxyVia Directive

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.

• If set to Off, which is the default, no special processing is performed. If a request or reply contains a Via: header, it is passed through unchanged.
• If set to On, each request and reply will get a Via: header line added for the current host.
• If set to Full, each generated Via: header line will additionally have the Apache server version shown as a Via: comment field.
• If set to Block, every proxy request will have all its Via: header lines removed. No new Via: header will be generated.