Rancher Active Proxy

Rancher Active Proxy is an all-in-one reverse proxy for Rancher, supporting Letsencrypt out of the box !

Rancher Active Proxy is based on the excellent idea of jwilder/nginx-proxy.

Rancher Active Proxy replace docker-gen by Rancher-gen-rap adi90x/rancher-gen-rap ( a fork of the also excellent janeczku/go-rancher-gen adding some more function )

Rancher Active Proxy use label instead of environmental value.

I would recommend to use latest image from DockerHub or you can use tag versions. Keep in mind that branch are mostly development features and could not work as expected.

Easy Setup with catalog

Add https://github.com/adi90x/rancher-active-proxy.git to your custom catalog list( Rancher > Admin > Settings ).

Then go to catalog and install Rancher Active Proxy !

Usage

Minimal Params To run it:

$ docker run -d -p 80:80  adi90x/rancher-active-proxy

Then start any containers you want proxied with a label rap.host=subdomain.youdomain.com

$ docker run -l rap.host=foo.bar.com  ...

The containers being proxied must expose the port to be proxied, either by using the EXPOSE directive in their Dockerfile or by using the --expose flag to docker run or docker create.

Provided your DNS is setup to forward foo.bar.com to the a host running rancher-active-proxy, the request will be routed to a container with the rap.host label set.

Summary of available labels for proxied containers.

Label	Description
rap.host	Virtual host to use ( several value could be separate by , )
rap.port	Port of the container to use ( only needed if several port are exposed ). Default Expose Port or 80
rap.proto	Protocol use to contact container ( http,https,uwsgi ). Default : http
rap.cert_name	Certificat name to use for the virtual host. Default rap.host
rap.https_method	Https method (redirect, noredirect, nohttps). Default : redirect
rap.le_host	Certificat to create/renew with Letsencrypt
rap.le_email	Email to use for Letsencrypt
rap.le_test	Set to true to use stagging letsencrypt server
rap.http_listen_ports	External Port you want Rancher-Active-Proxy to listen http for this server ( Default : 80 )
rap.https_listen_ports	External Port you want Rancher-Active-Proxy to listen https for this server ( Default : 443 )
rap.server_tokens	Enable to specify the server_token value per container
rap.client_max_body_size	Enable to specify the client_max_body_size directive per container

Summary of environment variable available for Rancher Active Proxy.

Label	Description
DEBUG	Set to true to enable more output. Default : False.
CRON	Cron like expression to define when certs are renew. Default : 0 2 * * *
DEFAULT_HOST	Default Nginx host.
DEFAULT_EMAIL	Default Email for Letsencrypt.
RAP_DEBUG	Define Rancher-Gen-Rap verbosity (Valid values: "debug", "info", "warn", and "error"). Default: info
DEFAULT_PORT	Default port use for containers ( Default : 80 )
SPECIFIC_HOST	Limit RAP to only containers of a specific host name

Quick Summary of interesting volume to mount.

Path	Description
/etc/letsencrypt	Folder with all certificates used for https and Letsencrypt parameters
/etc/nginx/htpasswd	Basic Authentication Support ( file should be rap.host)
/etc/nginx/vhost.d	Specifc vhost configuration ( file should be rap.host) . Location configuration should end by _location

Special Attention for standalone containers

Rancher Active Proxy is also able to work for standalone containers on the host it is launch.

There is only one limit to this : You should not use the same host name ( rap.host label ) for a standalone container and for a service.

This feature even enable you to proxy rancher-server, just start it with something like that :

docker run -d --restart=unless-stopped -p 8080:8080 --name=rancher-server -l rap.host=admin.foo.com -l rap.port=8080 -l rap.le_host=admin.foo.com -l [email protected] -l io.rancher.container.pull_image=always rancher/server

In this case admin.foo.com will enable you to acces rancher administration, but it is better to keep port 8080 expose and use http://foo.com:8080 as the host registration URL.

Let's Encrypt support out of box

Rancher Active Proxy is using certbot from Let's Encrypt in order to automatically get SSL certificates for containers.

In order to enable that feature you need to add rap.le_host label to the container ( you probably want it to be equal to rap.host)

And you should either start Rancher Active Proxy with environment variable DEFAULT_EMAIL or specify rap.le_email as a container label.

If you are developping I recommend to add rap.le_test=true to the container in order to use Let's Encrypt stagging environment and to not exceed limits.

SAN certificates

Rancher Active Proxy support SAN certifcates ( one certificate for several domains ).

To create a SAN certificate you need to separate hostname by ";" ( instead of "," for separate domains)

rap.le_host=admin.foo.com;api.foo.com;mail.foo.com

This will create a single certificate matching : admin.foo.com, api.foo.com, mail.foo.com . The certificate created will be name admin.foo.com but symlink will be create to match all domain.

Multiple Ports

If your container exposes multiple ports, Rancher Active Proxy will use rap.port label, then use the expose port if there is only one port exposed, or default to DEFAULT_PORT environmental variable ( which is set by default to 80 ). Or you can try your hand at the Advanced rap.host syntax.

Advanced rap.host syntax

Using the Advanced rap.host syntax you can specify multiple host names to each go to their own backend port. Basically provides support for rap.host, rap.port, and rap.proto all in one field.

For example, given the following:

rap.host=api.example.com=>http:80,api-admin.example.com=>http:8001,secure.example.com=>https:8443

This would yield 3 different server/upstream configurations...

1. Requests for api.example.com would route to this container's port 80 via http
2. Requests for api-admin.example.com would route to this containers port 8001 via http
3. Requests for secure.example.com would route to this containers port 8443 via https

Multiple Listening Port

If needed you can use Rancher-Active-Proxy to listen for different port.

docker run -d -p 8081:8081 -p 81:81 adi90x/rancher-active-proxy

In this case, you can specify on which port Rancher Active Proxy should listen for a specific hostname :

docker run -d -l rap.host=foo.bar.com -l rap.listen_http_ports="81,8081" -l rap.port="53" containerexposing/port53

In this situation Rancher Active Proxy will listen for request matching rap.host on both port 81 and 8081 of you host and route those request to port 53 of your container.

Likewise, rap.listen_https_ports will work for https request.

If you are not using port 80 and 443 at all you won't be able to use Let's Encrypt Automatic certificates.

Specific Host Name

Using environmental value SPECIFIC_HOST you can limit Rancher Active Proxy to containers running on a single host.

Just start Rancher Active Proxy like that : docker run -d -p 80:80 -e SPECIFIC_HOST=Hostnameofthehost adi90x/rancher-active-proxy

Remove Script

Rancher Active Proxy pack an easy script to revoke/delete a certificate.

You can run it : docker run adi90x/rancher-active-proxy /app/remove DomainCertToRemove

Script is adding '*' at the end of the command therefore /app/remove foo will delete foo.bar.com , foo.bar.org, foo.bar2.com ..

Special attention if you are using it with SAN certificates you need to be careful and run it for each domain in the SAN certificate.

Do not forget to delete the label on the container before using that script or it will be recreated on next update.

If you are starting it with Rancher do not forget to set Auto Restart : Never (Start Once)

Per-host server configuration

If you want to 100% personalize your server section on a per-rap.host basis, add your server configuration in a file under /etc/nginx/vhost.d The file should use the suffix _server.

For example, if you have a virtual host named app.example.com and you have configured a proxy_cache my-cache in another custom file, you could tell it to use a proxy cache as follows:

$ docker run -d -p 80:80 -p 443:443 -v /path/to/vhost.d:/etc/nginx/vhost.d:ro adi90x/rancher-active-proxy

You should therefore have a file app.example.com_server in the /etc/nginx/vhost.d folder that contain the whole server block you want to use :

server {
        server_name app.example.com
        listen 80;
        access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log vhost;
        
        location / {
                proxy_pass http://app.example.com;
        }
}

If you are using multiple hostnames for a single container (e.g. rap.host=example.com,www.example.com), the virtual host configuration file must exist for each hostname. If you would like to use the same configuration for multiple virtual host names, you can use a symlink.

Per-host server default configuration

If you want most of your virtual hosts to use a default single server block configuration and then override on a few specific ones, add a /etc/nginx/vhost.d/default_server file. This file will be used on any virtual host which does not have a /etc/nginx/vhost.d/{rap.host}_server file associated with it.

---

The below part is mostly taken from jwilder/nginx-proxy README and modify to reflect Rancher Active Proxy

Multiple Hosts

If you need to support multiple virtual hosts for a container, you can separate each entry with commas. For example, foo.bar.com,baz.bar.com,bar.com and each host will be setup the same.

Wildcard Hosts

You can also use wildcards at the beginning and the end of host name, like *.bar.com or foo.bar.*. Or even a regular expression, which can be very useful in conjunction with a wildcard DNS service like xip.io, using ~^foo\.bar\..*\.xip\.io will match foo.bar.127.0.0.1.xip.io, foo.bar.10.0.2.2.xip.io and all other given IPs. More information about this topic can be found in the nginx documentation about server_names.

SSL Backends

If you would like the reverse proxy to connect to your backend using HTTPS instead of HTTP set rap.proto=https on the backend container.

uWSGI Backends

If you would like to connect to uWSGI backend, set rap.proto=uwsgi on the backend container. Your backend container should than listen on a port rather than a socket and expose that port.

Default Host

To set the default host for nginx use the env var DEFAULT_HOST=foo.bar.com for example :

$ docker run -d -p 80:80 -e DEFAULT_HOST=foo.bar.com adi90x/rancher-active-proxy

SSL Support

SSL is supported using single host, wildcard and SNI certificates using naming conventions for certificates or optionally specifying a cert name (for SNI) as an environment variable.

To enable SSL:

$ docker run -d -p 80:80 -p 443:443 -v /path/to/certs:/etc/nginx/certs  adi90x/rancher-active-proxy

The contents of /path/to/certs should contain the certificates and private keys for any virtual hosts in use. The certificate and keys should be named after the virtual host with a .crt and .key extension. For example, a container with label rap.host=foo.bar.com should have a foo.bar.com.crt and foo.bar.com.key file in the certs directory.

If you are running the container in a virtualized environment (Hyper-V, VirtualBox, etc...), /path/to/certs must exist in that environment or be made accessible to that environment. By default, Docker is not able to mount directories on the host machine to containers running in a virtual machine.

Diffie-Hellman Groups

If you have Diffie-Hellman groups enabled, the files should be named after the virtual host with a dhparam suffix and .pem extension. For example, a container with rap.host=foo.bar.com should have a foo.bar.com.dhparam.pem file in the certs directory.

Wildcard Certificates

Wildcard certificates and keys should be named after the domain name with a .crt and .key extension. For example rap.host=foo.bar.com would use cert name bar.com.crt and bar.com.key.

SNI

If your certificate(s) supports multiple domain names, you can start a container with rap.cert_name=<name> to identify the certificate to be used. For example, a certificate for *.foo.com and *.bar.com could be named shared.crt and shared.key. A container running with rap.host=foo.bar.com and rap.cert_name=shared will then use this shared cert.

How SSL Support Works

The SSL cipher configuration is based on mozilla nginx intermediate profile which should provide compatibility with clients back to Firefox 1, Chrome 1, IE 7, Opera 5, Safari 1, Windows XP IE8, Android 2.3, Java 7. The configuration also enables HSTS, and SSL session caches.

The default behavior for the proxy when port 80 and 443 are exposed is as follows:

• If a container has a usable cert, port 80 will redirect to 443 for that container so that HTTPS is always preferred when available.
• If the container does not have a usable cert, a 503 will be returned.

Note that in the latter case, a browser may get an connection error as no certificate is available to establish a connection. A self-signed or generic cert named default.crt and default.key will allow a client browser to make a SSL connection (likely w/ a warning) and subsequently receive a 503.

To serve traffic in both SSL and non-SSL modes without redirecting to SSL, you can include the label rap.https_method=noredirect (the default is rap.https_method=redirect). You can also disable the non-SSL site entirely with rap.https_method=nohttp. rap.https_method must be specified on each container for which you want to override the default behavior. If rap.https_method=noredirect is used, Strict Transport Security (HSTS) is disabled to prevent HTTPS users from being redirected by the client. If you cannot get to the HTTP site after changing this setting, your browser has probably cached the HSTS policy and is automatically redirecting you back to HTTPS. You will need to clear your browser's HSTS cache or use an incognito window / different browser.

Basic Authentication Support

In order to be able to secure your virtual host, you have to create a file named as its equivalent rap.host label on directory /etc/nginx/htpasswd/rap.host

$ docker run -d -p 80:80 -p 443:443 \
    -v /path/to/htpasswd:/etc/nginx/htpasswd \
    -v /path/to/certs:/etc/nginx/certs \
    adi90x/rancher-active-proxy

You'll need apache2-utils on the machine where you plan to create the htpasswd file. Or you can use an nginx container to create the file ( using OpenSSL as explained in Nginx Readme )

docker run -it nginx printf "Username_to_use:$(openssl passwd -crypt Password_to_use)\n" >> /path/to/htpasswd/{rap.host}

Custom Nginx Configuration

If you need to configure Nginx beyond what is possible using environment variables, you can provide custom configuration files on either a proxy-wide or per-rap.host basis.

Replacing default proxy settings

If you want to replace the default proxy settings for the nginx container, add a configuration file at /etc/nginx/proxy.conf. A file with the default settings would look like this:

# HTTP 1.1 support
proxy_http_version 1.1;
proxy_buffering off;
proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Connection $proxy_connection;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $proxy_x_forwarded_proto;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Port $proxy_x_forwarded_port;

# Mitigate httpoxy attack (see README for details)
proxy_set_header Proxy "";

NOTE: If you provide this file it will replace the defaults; you may want to check the nginx.tmpl file to make sure you have all of the needed options.

NOTE: The default configuration blocks the Proxy HTTP request header from being sent to downstream servers. This prevents attackers from using the so-called httpoxy attack. There is no legitimate reason for a client to send this header, and there are many vulnerable languages / platforms (CVE-2016-5385, CVE-2016-5386, CVE-2016-5387, CVE-2016-5388, CVE-2016-1000109, CVE-2016-1000110, CERT-VU#797896).

Proxy-wide

To add settings on a proxy-wide basis, add your configuration file under /etc/nginx/conf.d using a name ending in .conf.

This can be done in a derived image by creating the file in a RUN command or by COPYing the file into conf.d:

FROM adi90x/rancher-active-proxy
RUN { \
      echo 'server_tokens off;'; \
      echo 'client_max_body_size 100m;'; \
    } > /etc/nginx/conf.d/my_proxy.conf

Or it can be done by mounting in your custom configuration in your docker run command:

$ docker run -d -p 80:80 -p 443:443 -v /path/to/my_proxy.conf:/etc/nginx/conf.d/my_proxy.conf:ro adi90x/rancher-active-proxy

Per-VIRTUAL_HOST

To add settings on a per-rap.host basis, add your configuration file under /etc/nginx/vhost.d. Unlike in the proxy-wide case, which allows multiple config files with any name ending in .conf, the per-rap.host file must be named exactly after the rap.host.

In order to allow virtual hosts to be dynamically configured as backends are added and removed, it makes the most sense to mount an external directory as /etc/nginx/vhost.d as opposed to using derived images or mounting individual configuration files.

For example, if you have a virtual host named app.example.com, you could provide a custom configuration for that host as follows:

$ docker run -d -p 80:80 -p 443:443 -v /path/to/vhost.d:/etc/nginx/vhost.d:ro adi90x/rancher-active-proxy
$ { echo 'server_tokens off;'; echo 'client_max_body_size 100m;'; } > /path/to/vhost.d/app.example.com

If you are using multiple hostnames for a single container (e.g. ``rap.host=example.com,www.example.com), the virtual host configuration file must exist for each hostname. If you would like to use the same configuration for multiple virtual host names, you can use a symlink:

$ { echo 'server_tokens off;'; echo 'client_max_body_size 100m;'; } > /path/to/vhost.d/www.example.com
$ ln -s /path/to/vhost.d/www.example.com /path/to/vhost.d/example.com

Per-VIRTUAL_HOST default configuration

If you want most of your virtual hosts to use a default single configuration and then override on a few specific ones, add those settings to the /etc/nginx/vhost.d/default file. This file will be used on any virtual host which does not have a /etc/nginx/vhost.d/{rap.host} file associated with it.

Per-VIRTUAL_HOST location configuration

To add settings to the "location" block on a per-rap.host basis, add your configuration file under /etc/nginx/vhost.d just like the previous section except with the suffix _location.

For example, if you have a virtual host named app.example.com and you have configured a proxy_cache my-cache in another custom file, you could tell it to use a proxy cache as follows:

$ docker run -d -p 80:80 -p 443:443 -v /path/to/vhost.d:/etc/nginx/vhost.d:ro adi90x/rancher-active-proxy
$ { echo 'proxy_cache my-cache;'; echo 'proxy_cache_valid  200 302  60m;'; echo 'proxy_cache_valid  404 1m;' } > /path/to/vhost.d/app.example.com_location

If you are using multiple hostnames for a single container (e.g. rap.host=example.com,www.example.com), the virtual host configuration file must exist for each hostname. If you would like to use the same configuration for multiple virtual host names, you can use a symlink:

$ { echo 'proxy_cache my-cache;'; echo 'proxy_cache_valid  200 302  60m;'; echo 'proxy_cache_valid  404 1m;' } > /path/to/vhost.d/app.example.com_location
$ ln -s /path/to/vhost.d/www.example.com /path/to/vhost.d/example.com

Per-VIRTUAL_HOST location default configuration

If you want most of your virtual hosts to use a default single location block configuration and then override on a few specific ones, add those settings to the /etc/nginx/vhost.d/default_location file. This file will be used on any virtual host which does not have a /etc/nginx/vhost.d/{rap.host} file associated with it.

Contributing

Do not hesitate to send issues or pull requests !

Automated Gitlab CI is used to build Rancher Active Proxy therefore send any pull request/issues to Rancher Active Proxy on Gitlab.com