Running Convos behind my favorite web server

1. Start Convos with correct environment variables
2. Generic web server set up
3. Example nginx config
4. Example Apache config

Convos and the web server need to be configured properly and WebSockets need to be supported through the whole chain.

Start Convos with correct environment variables

The environment variable CONVOS_REVERSE_PROXY must be set to a true value.

CONVOS_REVERSE_PROXY=1 ./script/convos daemon --listen http://127.0.0.1:8080

Generic web server set up

The reverse proxy needs to pass on some HTTP headers to Convos, so correct URLs will be generated. Here are the important headers:

• "Host" header must be set to the original request's "Host" header.
• "X-Forwarded-For" must be set for Convos to see the correct remote IP
• "X-Request-Base" header must be set to the root URL for Convos.

"X-Request-Base" must also have a path part if Convos is not mounted under "/", and you might have to rewrite the incoming request.

Example nginx config

Here is a complete example on how to start Convos with nginx:

# Host and port where convos is running
upstream convos_upstream { server 127.0.0.1:8080; }

server {
  listen 80;
  server_name your-domain.com;

  # Mount convos under http://your-domain.com/
  location / {

    # Pass requests on to the upstream defined above
    proxy_pass http://convos_upstream;

    # Instruct Convos to do the right thing regarding
    # HTTP and WebSockets
    proxy_http_version 1.1;
    proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
    proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";

    # http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_core_module.html#client_max_body_size
    client_max_body_size 0;

    # Enable Convos to construct correct URLs by passing on custom headers.
    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    proxy_set_header X-Request-Base "$scheme://$host/";
  }
}

If "X-Request-Base" has a path part, then you must also add a "rewrite" rule:

rewrite ^/whatever/convos/?(.*)$ /$1 break;
proxy_set_header X-Request-Base "$scheme://$host/whatever/convos";

Example Apache config

Here is a complete example on how to start Convos with Apache:

  ServerAdmin [email protected]
  ServerName your-domain.com

  
    Order allow,deny
    Allow from all
  

  # Enable Convos to construct correct URLs by passing on custom headers.
  ProxyRequests Off
  ProxyPreserveHost On
  RequestHeader set X-Request-Base "http://your-domain.com/"

  # https://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/mod_remoteip.html
  RemoteIPHeader X-Forwarded-For

  # http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.0/mod/core.html#limitrequestbody
  LimitRequestBody 0

  # Pass requests on to Convos
  ProxyPass /events ws://localhost:8080/events
  ProxyPass / http://localhost:8080/ keepalive=On
  ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8080/