Getting HAPROXY to redirect http to https in users browser session
- by Jon
We are currently using a Internet cloud provider to host our SaaS platform. The platform consists of a Firewall - Cloud Provider SLB - - Apache Web Server - HAPROXY SLB - Liferay Platform
We have had to use HAPROXY because of an issue with the cloud providers SLB that meant we were unable to use it for load balancing the Liferay platform applications.
I have implemented HAPROXY in our secure tier and that seems to do the trick of load balancing the requests quite adequately.
However during testing we encountered a functional issue whereby selecting a sub-menu from the web portal resulted in the application hanging, using an http analyser we saw that the request being passed back to the users browser was in http, from discussing this with the software vendor it transpires that the Liferay application has some hard-coded http links, and that other customers have worked around this by using physical NLB's such as F5 and redirecting the http traffic to https.
The entry in the HAPROXY logs reads:
haproxy[2717]: haproxy[2717]: <Apache Web Agent>:37957 [11/Apr/2013:08:07:00.128] http-uapi uapi/<ServerName> 0/0/0/9/10 200 4912 - - ---- 4/2/1/2/0 0/0 "GET /servicedesk/controller?docommand=renderradform&!key=esd_sfb001_frm_feedback_forms_list&isportalintegratedmode=true&USR=joe.bloggs%40gmail.com&_dc=1365667773097&redirecturl=controller%3Fdocommand%3Drenderbody%26%21key%3DESD_SFB001_FRM_FEEDBACK_FORMS_LIST%26isportalintegratedmode%3Dtrue&sso_token=ALiYv2UqzLsAhSw1ZchRDlCHlq44Bhj9&ONERROR=%2Fweb%2Fjsp%2Fapps%2Fportal-integration-error.jsp&itype=login&slicetoken=NW51O%242aRo%2C_Zz%2476P_9DTtnFmz6%28bhk&AUTOFORWARDURL=controller%3Fdocommand%3Drenderbody%26%21key%3DESD_SFB001_FRM_FEEDBACK_FORMS_LIST%26isportalintegratedmode%3Dtrue&LOGINPAGE=https%3A%2F%2F<FQDN of Web Portal>%2Fweb%2F4732cf01-82c3-4bc5-b6c9-552253e672cf%2Fworkflow-tools&appid=1&!uid=1&!redownloadToken=7.0.3.1.1363611301.0&userlocale=en_US&!datechanged=2012-05-18%2015:05:31.38 HTTP/1.1"
:37957 [11/Apr/2013:08:07:00.128] http-uapi uapi/<ServerName> 0/0/0/9/10 200 4912 - - ---- 4/2/1/2/0 0/0 "GET /servicedesk/controller?docommand=renderradform&!key=esd_sfb001_frm_feedback_forms_list&isportalintegratedmode=true&USR=joe.bloggs%40gmail.com&_dc=1365667773097&redirecturl=controller%3Fdocommand%3Drenderbody%26%21key%3DESD_SFB001_FRM_FEEDBACK_FORMS_LIST%26isportalintegratedmode%3Dtrue&sso_token=ALiYv2UqzLsAhSw1ZchRDlCHlq44Bhj9&ONERROR=%2Fweb%2Fjsp%2Fapps%2Fportal-integration-error.jsp&itype=login&slicetoken=NW51O%242aRo%2C_Zz%2476P_9DTtnFmz6%28bhk&AUTOFORWARDURL=controller%3Fdocommand%3Drenderbody%26%21key%3DESD_SFB001_FRM_FEEDBACK_FORMS_LIST%26isportalintegratedmode%3Dtrue&LOGINPAGE=https%3A%2F%2F<FQDN of Web Portal>%2Fweb%2F4732cf01-82c3-4bc5-b6c9-552253e672cf%2Fworkflow-tools&appid=1&!uid=1&!redownloadToken=7.0.3.1.1363611301.0&userlocale=en_US&!datechanged=2012-05-18%2015:05:31.38 HTTP/1.1"
The corresponding HTTP browser entry shows:
http://<FQDN of ServiceDesk>/servicedesk/controller?docommand=renderradform&!key=esd_org019_frm_contact_list&isportalintegratedmode=true&USR=joe.bloggs%40gmail.com&_dc=1365665987887&redirecturl=controller%3Fdocommand%3Drenderbody%26%21key%3DESD_ORG019_FRM_CONTACT_LIST%26isportalintegratedmode%3Dtrue&sso_token=3NxsXYORMPp32SwL8ftVUCMH2QdWLH82&ONERROR=%2Fweb%2Fjsp%2Fapps%2Fportal-integration-error.jsp&itype=login&slicetoken=NW51O%242aRo%2C_Zz%2476P_9DTtnFmz6%28bhk&AUTOFORWARDURL=controller%3Fdocommand%3Drenderbody%26%21key%3DESD_ORG019_FRM_CONTACT_LIST%26isportalintegratedmode%3Dtrue&LOGINPAGE=https%3A%2F%2F<FQDN of Web Portal>>%2Fweb%2F4732cf01-82c3-4bc5-b6c9-552253e672cf%2Fapplication-setup&appid=1&!uid=1&!redownloadToken=7.0.3.1.1363611301.0&userlocale=en_US&!datechanged=2012-10-26%2019:00:25.08
From reading through the forums and other sites it looks like we should be use to use HAPROXY to redirect the traffic to https, but try as I might I cant get it to work.
This is our HAPROXY configuration:
global
log 127.0.0.1 local2
chroot /var/lib/haproxy
pidfile /var/run/haproxy.pid
maxconn 4000
user haproxy
group haproxy
daemon
stats socket /var/lib/haproxy/stats
defaults
mode http
log global
option httplog
option dontlognull
option http-server-close
option forwardfor except 127.0.0.0/8
option redispatch
retries 3
timeout http-request 10s
timeout queue 1m
timeout connect 10s
timeout client 1m
timeout server 1m
timeout http-keep-alive 10s
timeout check 10s
maxconn 3000
frontend http-openfire
bind *:7070
default_backend openfire
backend openfire
balance roundrobin
server <serverName> <IPv4 Address>:7070 check
server <serverName> <IPv4 Address>:7070 check
frontend http-uapi
bind *:7080
default_backend uapi
backend uapi
balance roundrobin
server <serverName> <IPv4 Address>:7080 check
server <serverName> <IPv4 Address>:7080 check
frontend http-sec
bind *:8080
default_backend sec
backend sec
balance roundrobin
server <serverName> <IPv4 Address>:8080 check
server <serverName> <IPv4 Address>:8080 check
frontend http-wall
bind *:9080
default_backend wall
backend wall
balance roundrobin
server <serverName> <IPv4 Address>:9080 check
server <serverName> <IPv4 Address>:9080 check
frontend http-xmpp
bind *:9090
default_backend xmpp
backend xmpp
balance roundrobin
server <serverName> <IPv4 Address>:9090 check
server <serverName> <IPv4 Address>:9090 check
frontend http-aim
bind *:10080
default_backend aim
backend aim
balance roundrobin
server <serverName> <IPv4 Address>:10080 check
server <serverName> <IPv4 Address>:10080 check
frontend http-servicedesk
bind *:8081
default_backend servicedesk
backend servicedesk
balance roundrobin
server <serverName> <IPv4 Address>:8081 check
server <serverName> <IPv4 Address>:8081 check
listen stats :1936
mode http
stats enable
stats hide-version
stats realm Haproxy\ Statistics
stats uri /
stats auth haproxy:<Password>
I have tried following the articles listed posted on http://stackoverflow.com/questions/13227544/haproxy-redirecting-http-to-https-ssl and http://parsnips.net/haproxy-http-to-https-redirect/ but that hasn't made any difference.
Am I on the right track with this or are we trying to achieve the impossible?, I'm hoping I'm just being an idiot and one of you good people can point me in the right direction.