mod_extforward¶

Overview¶

Attention: currently in 1.4.17 / 1.4.16 / 1.4.15 and maybe earlier versions mod_extforward breaks (at least) url-matching like described in bug #1164 . That page also mentions a patch that fixes the problem (at the bottom).

Comman Kang <comman.kang at gmail.com> sent me:

  Hello jan.

       I've made something rough but similar to mod_extract_forwarded for
  Apache.  This module will extract the client's "real" ip from
  X-Forwarded-For header which is added by squid or other proxies. It might be
  useful for servers behind reverse proxy servers.

       However, this module is causing segfault with mod_ssl or
  $HTTP{''socket"} directive,  crashing in config_check_cond while patching
  connection ,  I do not understand architecture of the lighttpd well, does it
  need to call patch_connection in either handle_request_done and
  connection_reset ?

Lionel Elie Mamane <lionel@mamane.lu> improved the patch: ::

    I've taken lighttpd-1.4.10-mod_extforward.c from the wiki and I've
  extended it. Here is the result.

  Major changes:

   - IPv6 support

   - Fixed at least one segfault with SERVER['socket']

   - Arrange things so that a url.access-deny under scope of a
     HTTP['remoteip'] condition works well :)

  I've commented the code in some places, mostly where I wasn't sure
  what was going on, or I didn't see what the original author meant to
  do.

Options¶

extforward.forwarder
Sets trust level of proxy IP's.

Default: empty

Example: ::

extforward.forwarder = ("10.0.0.232" => "trust")

will translate ip addresses coming from 10.0.0.232 to real ip addresses extracted from X-Forwarded-For: HTTP request header.

Note¶

The effect of this module is variable on $HTTP["remotip"] directives and other module's remote ip dependent actions.
Things done by modules before we change the remoteip or after we reset it will match on the proxy's IP.
Things done in between these two moments will match on the real client's IP.
The moment things are done by a module depends on in which hook it does things and within the same hook
on whether they are before/after us in the module loading order
(order in the server.modules directive in the config file).

Tested behaviours:

mod_access: Will match on the real client.

mod_accesslog: In order to see the "real" ip address in access log, you'll have to load mod_extforward after mod_accesslog, like this:

    server.modules  = (
       .....
       "mod_accesslog",
       "mod_extforward" 
    )

Samples¶

Trust proxy 10.0.0.232 and 10.0.0.233

  extforward.forwarder = (
     "10.0.0.232" => "trust",
     "10.0.0.233" => "trust" 
  )

Trust all proxies (NOT RECOMMENDED!)

  extforward.forwarder = ( "all" => "trust")

Note that "all" has precedence over specific entries, so "all except" setups will not work.

Installation¶

mod_extforward is included in lighttpd 1.4.14 and later,
the instructions below apply to 1.4.13:

You need a current source-tree of lighttpd 1.4.13 and have to apply the patch:

$ gzip -cd lighttpd-1.4.13.tar.gz 
  $ cd lighttpd-1.4.13
  $ patch -ls -p1 -i ../lighttpd-1.4.11-mod-ext-forward-v2.path
  $ autoreconf
  $ ./configure ...
  $ make 
  $ sudo make install

here's my updated patch which applies to 1.4.13 tarball -glen
http://cvs.pld-linux.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb.cgi/SOURCES/lighttpd-mod_extforward-v2.patch