Instiki
Proxying

While it’s terribly convenient that Instiki comes with its own built-in webserver, there are some drawbacks:

• Perhaps your organization has firewalled Port 2500.
• Perhaps you simply want a “cleaner” URL for your Wiki, without the port number included.

Whatever the reason, the easiest “step up” from a vanilla Instiki installation is to set up Apache to proxy for Instiki. This website used to run this way. Now, we run Passenger, which has a number of advantages.

Below are the configuration directives to set up proxying.

In your httpd.conf file, enable proxying

 <IfModule mod_proxy.c>
  ProxyRequests Off
  <Proxy *>
    Require all granted
  </Proxy>
 </IfModule>

If you’re able, install the Apache 2.x x-sendfile module.

Then, for each wiki you want to proxy (e.g., this one):

 <Location /instiki>
   Require all granted
   ProxyPass  http://127.0.0.1:2500/instiki
   ProxyPassReverse  http://golem.ph.utexas.edu:2500/instiki
   ProxyPassReverseCookieDomain golem.ph.utexas.edu golem.ph.utexas.edu
   ProxyPassReverseCookiePath / /instiki/ 
   <IfModule mod_xsendfile.c>
     RequestHeader Set X-Sendfile-Type X-Sendfile
     XSendFile on
     XSendFileAllowAbove on
   </IfModule>
</Location>

In addition, you need to proxy the following directories (common to all your Wikis):

 <Location /stylesheets>
   Require all granted
   ProxyPass  http://127.0.0.1:2500/stylesheets
   ProxyPassReverse  http://golem.ph.utexas.edu:2500/stylesheets
 </Location>

 <Location /s5>
   Require all granted
   ProxyPass  http://127.0.0.1:2500/s5
   ProxyPassReverse  http://golem.ph.utexas.edu:2500/s5
 </Location>

 <Location /javascripts>
   Require all granted
   ProxyPass  http://127.0.0.1:2500/javascripts
   ProxyPassReverse  http://golem.ph.utexas.edu:2500/javascripts
</Location>

<Location /create_web>
  Require all granted
  ProxyPass  http://127.0.0.1:2500/create_web
  ProxyPassReverse  http://golem.ph.utexas.edu:2500/create_web
  ProxyPassReverseCookieDomain golem.ph.utexas.edu golem.ph.utexas.edu
</Location>

<Location /svg-edit>
  Require all granted
  ProxyPass  http://127.0.0.1:2500/svg-edit
  ProxyPassReverse  http://golem.ph.utexas.edu:2500/svg-edit
</Location>

Please note that these instructions were for Apache 2.3.x. For Apache 2.2.x and earlier, replace the lines

 Require all granted

with

 Order Allow,Deny
 Allow from all

The same proxying recipe works, whether you use the built-in WEBrick server or Mongrel.