How to Enable ProxyPass for Jenkins Application using Apache HTTP server

Test Environment –

Fedora 32 installed with selinux enabled
Apahce HTTP server installed
Jenkins installed

In this article we will how we can enable access to Jenkins URL which runs on default port 8080 from Apache HTTP server on port 80. It is always a good practice to hide the details of your Application like port number when we are trying to provide the access to the application to the end users like developers or any other members.

If you are interested in watching the video. Here is the youtube video on the step by step procedure for the same.

Lets see in this step by step procedure how we can achieve the same.

Procedure –

Step1: Validate Apache HTTP server installation

Make sure you have the Apache HTTP server installed on your Linux machine as shown below. If not installed get it installed and validated.

[root@fedser httpd]# rpm -qa httpd
httpd-2.4.46-1.fc32.x86_64

[root@fedser httpd]# ps -ef | grep httpd
root       16925       1  0 09:13 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
apache     16926   16925  0 09:13 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
apache     16927   16925  0 09:13 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
apache     16928   16925  0 09:13 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
apache     16929   16925  0 09:13 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
apache     17143   16925  0 09:13 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/httpd -DFOREGROUND
root       17636   15175  0 09:39 pts/0    00:00:00 grep --color=auto httpd

URL – http://fedser.stack.com/ – [FQDN on my Linux system – fedser.stack.com]

Step2: Validate Jenkins installation

Make sure you have the Jenkins Application installed on your Linux machine as shown below. If not installed get it installed and validated.

[root@fedser httpd]# rpm -qa | grep jenkins
jenkins-2.277.4-1.1.noarch

[root@fedser httpd]# ps -ef | grep jenkins
jenkins     1291       1  2 07:38 ?        00:02:27 /etc/alternatives/java -Dcom.sun.akuma.Daemon=daemonized -Djava.awt.headless=true -DJENKINS_HOME=/var/lib/jenkins -jar /usr/lib/jenkins/jenkins.war --logfile=/var/log/jenkins/jenkins.log --webroot=/var/cache/jenkins/war --daemon --httpPort=8080 --debug=5 --handlerCountMax=100 --handlerCountMaxIdle=20
root       17650   15175  0 09:39 pts/0    00:00:00 grep --color=auto jenkins

URL – http://fedser.stack.com:8080/

Step3: Enable and Load the Proxy modules

For enabling the ProxyPass we need to enable the mod_proxy and mod_proxy_http modules as shown below. These are by default loaded in the default Apache installation. If not enabled, please load them as shown below.

[root@fedser conf.modules.d]# cat /etc/httpd/conf.modules.d/00-proxy.conf | egrep "<mod_proxy>|<mod_proxy_http>"
LoadModule proxy_module modules/mod_proxy.so
LoadModule proxy_http_module modules/mod_proxy_http.so

Step4: Create the below virtual host configuration file for enabling proxy access to Jenkins Application

Now that we have Apache and Jenkins installed and also the required modules loaded, we need to include the below proxypass configuration to enable our Jenkins Application URL to be served from default port 80 as shown below.

[root@fedser conf.d]# cat /etc/httpd/conf.d/jenkins.conf 
<VirtualHost *:80>

<Directory />
    AllowOverride none
    #Require all denied
    Require host stack.com
</Directory>

ServerAdmin admin@feser.stack.com
ProxyRequests Off
ProxyPreserveHost On
AllowEncodedSlashes On

<Proxy *>
Require all granted
</Proxy>

ProxyPass / http://fedser.stack.com:8080/ nocanon
ProxyPassReverse / http://fedser.stack.com:8080/
</VirtualHost>

Step5: Restart the httpd service

After the configuration changes we need to restart our Apache instance for the changes to take effect as shown below.

[root@fedser conf]# systemctl restart httpd.service

Step6: Access the Jenkins Application on port 80

Lets try to access the URL as shown below on port 80 which should ideally serve the Jenkins Application URL.

URL – http://fedser.stack.com/

If you get any Error 403 Permission denied exception while accessing the application as shown below in the error_log thats because of SELinux enabled on the Linxu system which is blocking the outbound network connection from Apache HTTP server on port 8080.

[root@fedser httpd]# tail -f error_log
[Tue May 25 08:58:10.941538 2021] [proxy:error] [pid 16133:tid 16235] (13)Permission denied: AH00957: HTTP: attempt to connect to 127.0.0.1:8080 (localhost) failed
[Tue May 25 08:58:10.941626 2021] [proxy_http:error] [pid 16133:tid 16235] [client 127.0.0.1:41684] AH01114: HTTP: failed to make connection to backend: localhost
[Tue May 25 08:58:11.654201 2021] [proxy:error] [pid 16134:tid 16261] (13)Permission denied: AH00957: HTTP: attempt to connect to 127.0.0.1:8080 (localhost) failed

To resolve this error you need to enable the outbound http network connection boolean as shown below.

[root@fedser httpd]# /usr/sbin/setsebool -P httpd_can_network_connect 1

Once the selinux boolean is enabled we should be able to access the application and load the Jenkins login page

Hope you learnt something in this article. Thank you..