Topic: Hostnames and Web Server

[Gary Kenny]

Hi,

I have SME 5.6 acting as a firewall between our router and the web server (it is serving as a domain controller and VPN as well).

Our domain name is pointing to our ISP DNS servers and they are pointing www and non-host records to the fixed IP of the router. The router is configured to map incoming traffic to SME.

I want to send HTTP requests to another server behind the firewall (windows server). I thought that the "Hostnames and Addresses" option was where this is done. I have tried to send www requests to the internal IP using Location 'Local' but to no avail. I still get the SME "This web site is under construction" message.

Can anyone help?

Cheers,

Gary

[Andrew Hodgson]

Hi,

Currently I can't find out where port forwarding is configured, and the faq states it is not possible.  As an interim measure you may want to change the port forwarding config in the router, in fact I would not bother using the gateway functionality of the E-smith server, and use the router as a gateway, and use the E-smith server for pdc, vpn, mail etc in stand-allone server mode.

Andrew.

[Kelvin]

Port Forwarding in SME :-

http://www.lordsfam.net/downloads/production/e-smith-portforwarding/

Search and you will find !

Kelvin

[Bill Talcott]

Gary Kenny wrote:
>
> I want to send HTTP requests to another server behind the
> firewall (windows server). I thought that the "Hostnames and
> Addresses" option was where this is done. I have tried to
> send www requests to the internal IP using Location 'Local'
> but to no avail. I still get the SME "This web site is under
> construction" message.

SME provides DNS only to the LAN. The stuff entered in the Hostnames panel will only apply to PCs on the LAN unless you have a ServiceLink subscription. If you just want to forward all web requests, you may want to look into changing apache's listening port and using ProxyPass to send everything to another server.

[Gary Kenny]

Hi Andrew,

I was thinking of using the router for portforwarding. However, I hope that I can forward all traffic from the router to SME and perform the necessary forwarding there.

I downloaded an RPM that adds portforwarding functionality to the SME administrative panel.

Cheers,

Gary

[rob wellesley]

Also - when you make changes  in "hostnames and addresses" we find that a reboot is required - probably to reload the dns cache.

rob

[Gary Kenny]

Hi,

I might regret asking this question:
I have a router that is directing web traffic to the SME server (outside the SME LAN). My ISP directs all requests to our URL to the fixed IP of our router.

I don't require SME to provide the DNS service but I do require that the url http://www.domain.com is sent to an alternative server within the LAN (and behind SME).

Can this be done using 'hostnames and addresses'? I have tried port-forwarding but this doesn't seem to work for http requests on port 80.

Cheers,

Gary

[Abe Loveless]

No, not Hostnames and Addresses.  You need a contrib or customization.

If using 5.1.2 you can try this:

http://myezserver.com/downloads/mitel/beta/proxypass/

Or, take a look at the docs for ProxyPass and ProxyPassReverse at http://httpd.apache.org/docs/mod/mod_proxy.html  You should be able to get it to do what you want.

[John Gibbs]

Looked at the above links to proxypass, and I think I can use it as I need to.. but let me run this by you all..

I have in intranet server (intranet.myorg.com) that management wants to be accessable from outside. If I open a port and forward it, some links on the server will break (i.e those from intranet.myorg.com/~JoeSmith to intranet/~BillSmith).

Can I use proxypass to map all internal URLs to a mirror directory on the esmith box?

Cheers,
--John

[Abe Loveless]

If I understand your question correctly, you can use the ProxyPass contrib to do this.

Essentially, it will let you specify http://yourdomain.com/DIRECTORY-ALIAS and have that forward to an internal server's directory structure.

Depending on how you build your directory structures, you're probably right... you could set it up to work from both areas.  You might also encourage your users to use relative paths.  So that when linking from users/bob/directory1/index.html to users/joe/directory/index.html  all they have to do is use a link like "../../joe/directory/index.html".  Of course, I realize this may be beyond many users.

Does that help any?

[Joseph]

Has anyone actually got the proxy pass contrib to work on SME 5.6?

Thanks
Joseph

[Abe Loveless]

Yep....

Give this a try:
http://tech-geeks.org/contrib/loveless/beta/proxypass/