# Reverse Proxy, worth the trouble to setting up?

## pstar

Hi, I am trying to setup a reverse proxy for two of my home computers to share a public IP address and same 80 port.

But seems to me that it probably more complexed than I thought. After spend hours trying to figure it out. There

are still problems: I can view the page when my browser pointed to the proxy server, but when I tried to login, after 

input user name and password for that webpage, it will try to load the address for the internal server. I believe I need setup

ProxyPassReverseCookiePath and ProxyPassReverseCookieDomain, and after read help page from apache still don't know 

how. 

After spending almost a whole day in weekend, I am wandering, unless I want to be an expert in apache setting, trying to

figure out reverse proxy for my personal website didn't worth it?

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## Hu

From your post, it sounds like you are trying to use Apache as the reverse proxy on the accessible host.  Is this correct?  What web servers are on the internal hosts that the reverse proxy is multiplexing?  What content are they serving?  What exactly do you mean by "it will try to load the address for the internal server"?

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## pstar

 *Hu wrote:*   

> From your post, it sounds like you are trying to use Apache as the reverse proxy on the accessible host.  Is this correct?  What web servers are on the internal hosts that the reverse proxy is multiplexing?  What content are they serving?  What exactly do you mean by "it will try to load the address for the internal server"?

 

Hi Hu, Sorry for been not clear.

Yes, the reverse proxy is the host been forward port 80 by the gateway, thus provide http service to internet. The internal host is a Apache on Gentoo. I put a Wiki website constructed by PHP with 

Javascript and possible AJAX components but no database connection. The authorization is by using cookie I believe.

When I said  "it will try to load the address for the internal server", I meant that after I input username and password, it will refresh and trying to load the page with internal hostname instead of the 

hostname associated with reverse proxy server which seems are the problem.

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## Hu

Although you may be able to configure the reverse proxy to work around this, that sounds like a bug in the internal site: it is using absolute links to itself, when it should be using relative links.  I suggest fixing the internal site not to generate absolute links.

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## pstar

Thank you, been busy for last few days. I will try to look at the website. But it is a Wiki site written with PHP and Javascript by somebodyelse(dukowiki), not sure I will have enough time and knowledge

to do that.

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