Proxy Paths - Is this Pro

[shoulders]

SYSTEM INFORMATION
OS type and version	Ubuntu Linux 22.04.3
Webmin version	2.105
Usermin version	2.005
Virtualmin version	7.9.0
Theme version	21.09.5
Package updates	15 package updates are available

I have a couple of questions about the Virtualmin Proxying.

Question 1

As far as I know Proxy Paths was a Pro feature but I seem to have it on the GPL version, is this a bug that is is appearing in the GPL version.

Question 2

From the thread Setting up Reverse Proxy to local server using Virtualmin GUI it shows a page called Proxying, where would I find this page, a menu location would be useful for my notes and if it is only present on the Pro version.

Also if above is not correct, does the pro version have a more in-depth version of proxying and thus the pro page notes need a slight tweak.

Answer =

• Virtualmin → Web Configuration → Configure Website SSL → Proxying
• Virtualmin → Web Configuration → Configure Website → Proxying

Question 3

The feature Edit Proxy Website, when would you use this? is it supposed to be for the GPL users to have the most basic option of setting up a proxy server? Why would you not just use proxy paths and should these 2 features be merged?

Question 4

Is Proxy Paths so you can do individual paths rather than whole domains and this is it’s main purpose?

[Joe]

It is not a bug. It moved into GPL with the most recent version.

I wanted it to be more clear that you can use app servers and Docker/Podman in Virtualmin, and easier to explain how to do that. Since the way you use app servers or Docker/Podman is to proxy to it. So, there it is. Nobody can imagine it’s complicated anymore (but, they will anyway, as a lot of folks don’t know that the way you use Docker in any hosting deployment is to proxy to it).

[shoulders]

I am new to proxying but I am a quick learner . I will in the near future use this information to create a small tutorial

'Virtualmin → Web configuration → Proxying enabled?`

• what are the allowed inputs here?
  • http//newdomain.com/
  • https://newdomain.com/
  • https://newdomain.com/duck/
  • http//192.168.1.111/
  • https://192.168.1.111/
  • https://192.168.1.111/duck/
• Does this set the target site/ip for both for the http and https configurations if they are enabled?
• should there not be a one for http and one for https?
• What do you use this setting for when you have the 2 following settings?

'Virtualmin → Web configuration -->Configure SSL Website → Proxying`

'Virtualmin → Web configuration -->Configure Website → Proxying`

[Joe]

Proxy Paths is what’s new in GPL. You could always do proxying in GPL, it just wasn’t obvious how for users unfamiliar with proxying in Apache. You could, at any point in the past, setup a Docker container, or whatever app server, and setup proxy rules to make the app available on a path, but we’ve had so many people yell at us about not being able to run whatever random crap they want to run, that I wanted it to be as simple as we could make it, so people would stop saying, “You can’t use Docker with Virtualmin”. (They won’t stop saying it, but at least I tried.)

You don’t need to delve into any of the other proxy-related stuff (unless you want to), you only need to setup Proxy Paths for your apps. None of those other forms are relevant to this new feature, and it shouldn’t require too much in the way of documentation to use it, though I think the naming of the options is weird…it should also have popup help, I’m not sure why I missed that it didn’t.

Anyway, this is just about making a local app server or docker container visible to the world through a proxied path, in a very simple form. The Pro feature was always about making it simple, not about a thing that was impossible in GPL. I’ll try to make sure the next release has help files, though, so we’ve got some popup help for these options.

[shoulders]

Yeh, the pop-ups would be very useful. Helps ‘smooth the edges’

Thanks for the info.

[Ilia]

@shoulders

Yeh, the pop-ups would be very useful. Helps ‘smooth the edges’

I think we already have all information displayed cleanly without using pop-ups. We use placeholders instead, e.g.:

[Joe]

“Balancer name” is nonsense, though. Nobody knows what that means.

[shoulders]

From above, no place holders, no tooltip and I be honest with you I am not sure what this does, just guessing. Also you can enable proxying in 3 places.

'Virtualmin → Web configuration → Proxying enabled?`

• what are the allowed inputs here?
  • http//newdomain.com/
  • https://newdomain.com/
  • https://newdomain.com/duck/
  • http//192.168.1.111/
  • https://192.168.1.111/
  • https://192.168.1.111/duck/
• Does this set the target site/ip for both for the http and https configurations if they are enabled?
• should there not be a one for http and one for https?
• What do you use this setting for when you have the 2 following settings?

[Joe]

@shoulders

should there not be a one for http and one for https?

No. http is dead. Don’t treat them differently, or you’ll break your website for some browsers. The only thing you should ever do with http is redirect it to https (and some browsers are going to do that automatically anyway).