Having trouble getting a web application that uses websockets to work after setting up the HTTPS Apache reverse proxy to Tomcat

March 4, 2017 2.7k views
Apache Security Ubuntu 16.04
paulge8
By:
paulge8

I have a web application that uses a WebSocket connection.
I set up a Ubuntu droplet and configured Apache and Tomcat.
My application was working fine until I tried to setup SSL.
I followed the instructions to get an SSL certificate, and followed the instructions in the following post to set up the Reverse Proxy with Apache:
How To Encrypt Tomcat 8 Connections with Apache or Nginx on Ubuntu 16.04
Now, SSL works fine, but it complains that you can not start a ws:// from an HTTPS connection.
So I tried changing the call from ws:// to wss://, but the WebSocket will not connect, because it can't properly upgrade the protocol from https to wss.

I am relatively new to the unix world, and am not familiar with all of the Apache and Tomcat configuration parameters.
Can someone please let me know exactly what I need to configure to get Apache to properly proxy the wss to Tomcat, and/or what Tomcat configurations I need to make to get a secure websocket working with this Reverse Proxy setup?

1 comment
  • hansen March 4, 2017

    @paulge8
    I'm just leaving a comment, since I don't know the exact configuration of Apache, but in Nginx you would add the following to the location:

    proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
proxy_http_version 1.1;

    From what I remember in Apache, you need to enable the module mod_proxy_wstunnel
    https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/mod_proxy_wstunnel.html

    If it still doesn't work, then please add error logs from Apache and what error the browser console states.

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1 Answer
kamaln7 MOD February 27, 2018

This question was answered by @hansen:

@paulge8
I'm just leaving a comment, since I don't know the exact configuration of Apache, but in Nginx you would add the following to the location:

proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
proxy_http_version 1.1;

From what I remember in Apache, you need to enable the module mod_proxy_wstunnel
https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/mod_proxy_wstunnel.html

If it still doesn't work, then please add error logs from Apache and what error the browser console states.

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