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tweedegolf / mailcrab

Email test server for development, written in Rust

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Behind a reverse proxy

stappersg opened this issue · comments

commented

Summary: What to do extra / special to put mailcrab behind a reverse proxy

Just mailcarb works as documented in the README.md. ( backend: cargo run, frontend: trunk serve, sendmail: swaks --to foo@bar --server 127.0.0.1:1025, URL: http://127.0.0.1:1080 )

Behind a reverse proxy I have not so much success.

It is Apache that I use as reverse proxy, this is in /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf:

$ grep -ve \# /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf
<VirtualHost *:80>

	ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
	DocumentRoot /var/www/html

	<location /mailcrab>
        Require all granted
        ProxyPass http://127.0.0.1:1080
        ProxyPassReverse http://127.0.0.1:1080
        </location>


	ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
	CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined

</VirtualHost>
$

Visiting URL http://127.0.0.1/mailcrab or http://127.0.0.1/mailcrab/ gives nothing.
Visiting URL http://127.0.0.1/mailcrab/api/messages gives JSON.

Webbrowser is firefox-esr, 91.12.0esr-1~deb10u1

commented

With another Apache vhost

# grep -ve \# mailcrab.vincent.mig.conf 
<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerAdmin stappers@stappers.it
        ServerName mailcrab.vincent.mig

        <location />
        Require all granted
        ProxyPass http://127.0.0.1:1080/
        ProxyPassReverse http://127.0.0.1:1080/
        </location>

        ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log

        LogLevel warn

        CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/mailcrab.vincent.mig.access.log combined

</VirtualHost>

Gives http://mailcrab.vincent.mig/api/messages JSON.
And http://mailcrab.vincent.mig/ a "working" mailcrab.

The "" around working are for expressing that the manual refresh from #53 is needed.

commented

Intermediate report: It seems to be webbrowser related.

Visiting http://localhost/mailcrab with webbrowser yields an empty page. With tcpdump -i lo port 1080 can HTTP error 404 been seen.

The same URL with curl yields the index.html

$ curl --silent http://127.0.0.1/mailcrab | grep html
<!DOCTYPE html><html lang="en"><head>
</script></body></html>
$
commented

trunk should only be used when working on the frontend - it is intended to build and serve the frontend during development. If you want to serve mailcrab behind a proxy I suggest using one of the binary builds: https://github.com/tweedegolf/mailcrab/releases/tag/v0.17.0

commented

With prebuild binary mailcrab-linux-x86-64-gnu-v0.17 was the previously reported 404 not seen again. With sudo tcpdump -Xi lo port 1080 can be seen that the index.html is send. Why my webbrowser, FF 91.12.0esr, that doesn't pick up, is yet unknown.

commented

Are you setting MAILCRAB_PREFIX=mailcrab in the environment?

commented

Are you setting MAILCRAB_PREFIX=mailcrab in the environment?

No, I had not. :-/

With MAILCRAB_PREFIX=mailcrab in the environment does webbrowser pick up the index.html. \o/

However there is no sign of using /ws, a manual refresh as reported in #53 opening is needed to see new incoming email in the webbrowser.

commented

Running a websocket connection over a proxy is requires more than just proxying the HTTP traffic. See for instance https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/mod_proxy_wstunnel.html

commented

Acknowledge I will dive further into this. For now:

paddy:~# dpkg -l apache2 | grep ^ii
ii  apache2        2.4.51-2     amd64        Apache HTTP Server
paddy:~# a2query -m | grep proxy
proxy_http (enabled by site administrator)
proxy (enabled by site administrator)
paddy:~#
commented
commented

Yeah, works also on Apache 2.4.51-2 with mod_proxy and mod_proxy_http.

For a vhost I got succes with:

$ grep -v \# /etc/apache2/sites-available/mailcrab.vincent.mig.conf 
<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerAdmin stappers@stappers.it
        ServerName mailcrab.vincent.mig

        Documentroot /dev/null

        ProxyPass /ws "ws://127.0.0.1:1080/ws"
        ProxyPassReverse /ws "ws://127.0.0.1:1080/ws"

        ProxyPass / "http://127.0.0.1:1080/"
        ProxyPassReverse / "http://127.0.0.1:1080/"

        ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log

        LogLevel warn

        CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/mailcrab.vincent.mig.access.log combined

</VirtualHost>

Q: What to do extra / special to put mailcrab behind a reverse proxy?
A: For Apache: Do also proxy the websocket, "ws://127.0.0.1:1080/ws". For all,
using Path prefix, use environment variable MAILCRAB_PREFIX.

(Issue is solved and left open with a next question: Where to document "Beware, websockets!"? )

commented

We could add a section to the README about proxying the mailcrab frontend if we keep it brief. Would be nice to also include a hint on how to proxy websockets with nginx. Any PR's are welcome on this.