Apache

Overview

Alliance Auth gets served using a Web Server Gateway Interface (WSGI) script. This script passes web requests to Alliance Auth, which generates the content to be displayed and returns it. This means very little has to be configured in Apache to host Alliance Auth.

If you’re using a small VPS to host services with very limited memory, consider using NGINX.

Installation

apt-get install apache2

yum install httpd

dnf install httpd

systemctl enable httpd
systemctl start httpd

CentOS 7, Stream 8, Stream 9

Configuration

Permissions

Apache needs to be able to read the folder containing your auth project’s static files.

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/myauth/static

chown -R apache:apache /var/www/myauth/static

chown -R apache:apache /var/www/myauth/static

chown -R apache:apache /var/www/myauth/static

Further Configuration

Apache serves sites through defined virtual hosts. These are located in /etc/apache2/sites-available/ on Ubuntu and /etc/httpd/conf.d/httpd.conf on CentOS.

A virtual host for auth needs only proxy requests to your WSGI server (Gunicorn if you followed the installation guide) and serve static files. Examples can be found below. Create your config in its own file e.g. myauth.conf

To proxy and modify headers a few mods need to be enabled.

a2enmod proxy
a2enmod proxy_http
a2enmod headers

Create a new config file for auth e.g. /etc/apache2/sites-available/myauth.conf and fill out the virtual host configuration. To enable your config use a2ensite myauth.conf and then reload apache with service apache2 reload.

Place your virtual host configuration in the appropriate section within /etc/httpd/conf.d/httpd.conf and restart the httpd service with systemctl restart httpd.

Warning

In some scenarios, the Apache default page is still enabled. To disable it use

a2dissite 000-default.conf

CentOS

Sample Config File

<VirtualHost *:80>
        ServerName auth.example.com

        ProxyPassMatch ^/static !
        ProxyPassMatch ^/robots.txt !
        ProxyPassMatch ^/favicon.ico !

        ProxyPass / http://127.0.0.1:8000/
        ProxyPassReverse / http://127.0.0.1:8000/
        ProxyPreserveHost On

        Alias "/static" "/var/www/myauth/static"
        Alias "/robots.txt" "/var/www/myauth/static/robots.txt"
        Alias "/favicon.ico" "/var/www/myauth/static/allianceauth/icons/favicon.ico"

        <Directory "/var/www/myauth/static">
            Require all granted
        </Directory>

        <Location "/robots.txt">
            SetHandler None
            Require all granted
        </Location>

        <Location "/favicon.ico">
            SetHandler None
            Require all granted
        </Location>
</VirtualHost>

SSL

It’s 2018 - there’s no reason to run a site without SSL. The EFF provides free, renewable SSL certificates with an automated installer. Visit their website for information.

After acquiring SSL, the config file needs to be adjusted. Add the following lines inside the <VirtualHost> block:

        RequestHeader set X-FORWARDED-PROTOCOL https
        RequestHeader set X-FORWARDED-SSL On

Known Issues

Apache2 vs. Django

For some versions of Apache2, you might have to tell the Django framework explicitly to use SSL, since the automatic detection doesn’t work. SSL in general will work, but internally created URLs by Django might still be prefixed with just http:// instead of https://, so it can’t hurt to add these lines to myauth/myauth/settings/local.py.

# Setup support for proxy headers
USE_X_FORWARDED_HOST = True
SECURE_PROXY_SSL_HEADER = ("HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTOCOL", "https")