Reverse proxy with Apache httpd

Requirements

For this you will need Apache httpd server. That is a fairly popular package so your distro will probably have it.

Ubuntu

sudo apt install apache2

Arch

sudo pacman -S apache

OpenSuse

sudo zypper install apache2

Configure GoToSocial

In your GoToSocial config turn off letsencrypt. First open the file in your text editor.

sudoedit /gotosocial/config.yaml

Then set letsencrypt-enabled: false.

If GoToSocial is already running, restart it.

sudo systemctl restart gotosocial.service

Or if you don't have a systemd service just restart it manually.

Set up Apache httpd

First we will set up Apache httpd to serve GoToSocial as unsecured http and then later use certbot to automatically upgrade to https. Please do not try to use it until that's done or you'll be transmitting passwords over clear text.

First we'll write a configuration for Apache httpd and put it in /etc/apache2/sites-available.

sudo mkdir /etc/apache2/sites-available/
sudoedit /etc/apache2/sites-available/yourgotosocial.url.conf

The file you're about to create should look a bit like this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName example.com
  ProxyPreserveHost On
  ProxyPass / http://localhost:8080/
  ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8080/
</VirtualHost>

Note*: ProxyPreserveHost On is essential: It guarantees that the proxy and the gotosocial speak of the same Server name. If not, gotosocial will build the wrong authentication headers, and all attempts at federation will be rejected with 401.

Change ProxyPass to the ip and port that you're actually serving GoToSocial on and change ServerName to your own domain name. If your domain name is gotosocial.example.com then ServerName gotosocial.example.com; would be the correct value. If you're running GoToSocial on another machine with the local ip of 192.168.178.69 and on port 8080 then ProxyPass / http://192.168.178.69:8080/ would be the correct value.

Next we'll need to link the file we just created to the folder that Apache httpd reads configurations for active sites from.

sudo mkdir /etc/apache2/sites-enabled
sudo ln -s /etc/apache2/sites-available/yourgotosocial.url.conf /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/

Now check for configuration errors.

sudo apachectl -t

If everything is fine you should get this as output:

Syntax OK

Everything working? Great! Then restart Apache httpd to load your new config file.

sudo systemctl restart apache2

Setting up SSL with mod_md

To setup Apache httpd with mod_md, we'll need to load the module and then modify our vhost files:

MDomain example auto

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

<VirtualHost *:443>
  SSLEngine On
  ServerName example.com
  ProxyPreserveHost On
  ProxyPass / http://localhost:8080/
  ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8080/
  RequestHeader set "X-Forwarded-Proto" expr=https
</VirtualHost>

This allows mod_md to take care of the SSL setup, and it will also redirect from http to https. After we put this into place, we'll need to restart Apache httpd

sudo systemctl restart apache2

and monitor the logs to see when the new certificate arrives, and then reload it one last time and after that you should be good to go!

Apache httpd needs to be restart (or reloaded), every time mod_md gets a new certificate, see the module's docs for more information on that.

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