Running LemonLDAP::NG behind a reverse proxy

Your network infrastructure might require that LemonLDAP::NG components (Portal, Manager, Handler) run behind a reverse proxy.

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Transmitting the correct IP address to the portal

In this case, LemonLDAP::NG components will store the ip address of the connection between the reverse proxy and the webserver in the session, and in logs. This prevents features such as session restrictions and rules based on `ipAddr` from working as expected.

A Content Delivery Network (CDN) would also have the same issue.

In order to make LemonLDAP::NG behave correctly behind a proxy, you need to forward the original IP address all the way to LemonLDAP::NG.

In order to do this you have several options.

HTTP Header

This generic method is the most likely to work in your particular environment.

First, configure your reverse proxy (or CDN) to send the origin IP address in a HTTP header. Most reverse proxies do this by default, generally in a header named X-Forwarded-For or X-Real-IP.

Once the header is transmitted to LemonLDAP::NG’s web server, you may uncomment the relevant parts of the configuration file.

  • For Nginx:

set_real_ip_from  127.0.0.1;
real_ip_header    X-Forwarded-For;

Tip

Make sure Nginx was compiled with the http_real_ip module

  • For Apache:

RemoteIPHeader X-Forwarded-For
RemoteIPInternalProxy 127.0.0.1

Tip

Make sure the mod_remoteip module is enabled in your Apache installation

Danger

Both modules need you to specify the address of your reverse proxy. Using the http_real_ip or mod_remoteip module might let an attacker impersonate any IP address they want by setting the X-Forwarded-For header themselves. Please read the relevant module documentation carefully.

PROXY Protocol

Alternatively, if your proxy supports the PROXY protocol (Nginx, HAProxy, Amazon ELB), you may use it to carry over the information almost transparently.

Refer to your reverse proxy’s documentation to find out how to enable the PROXY protocol on the reverse proxy side.

Then, on the LemonLDAP::NG side, in the NGINX configuration of your Portal/Manager/Handler:

 listen 80   proxy_protocol;
# or
# listen 443 ssl proxy_protocol;

set_real_ip_from  127.0.0.1;
real_ip_header    proxy_protocol;

Fixing handler redirections

If your handler server runs behind a reverse proxy, it may have trouble figuring out the right URL to redirect you to after logging in.

In this case, you can force a particular port and scheme in the Virtual Host’s Options.

But is instead you want this scheme to be auto-detected by LemonLDAP (in order to have a same VHost domain available over multiple schemes), you can also use the following declarations in the handler’s virtual host to force LemonLDAP to use the correct port and scheme

Nginx

fastcgi_param SERVER_PORT 443
fastcgi_param HTTPS On

Apache

PerlSetEnv SERVER_PORT 443
PerlSetEnv HTTPS On