How do I set a domain name to an OpenCPU app?

Question

I have a Ubuntu 18.4 LTS server running OpenCPU , and am able to run the application myapp by pointing my browser to the address http://myip/ocpu/library/myapp/www/ . I wish to make the app available via the domain name mydomain.name , and have set up DNS records to point to myip .

On the server side, I created a file /etc/apache2/sites-available/myapp.conf , which looks like

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName mydomain.name
    DocumentRoot /ocpu/lib/myapp/www
    LogLevel info
    ErrorLog /var/log/myapp/apache_error.log
    CustomLog /var/log/myapp/apache_access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

However, sudo systemctl reload apache2 throws an error since it cannot find the documentRoot /ocpu/lib/myapp/www . In fact, there is no directory ocpu on the server.

I suspect that I need to set up a .conf file in /etc/opencpu/server.conf.d , but the structure of those files look very different from myapp.conf as given above, and I do not see an entry for a ServerName .

How do I redirect mydomain.name to http://myip/ocpu/library/myapp/www/ ?

Answer 1

If the site is available through http://myip/ocpu/library/myapp/www/ but should be available through http(s)://mydomain.name you can simply create a proxy entry in your apache2 configuration like this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName mydomain.name

    ProxyPreserveHost On
    ProxyPass "/" "http://myip/ocpu/library/myapp/www/"
</VirtualHost>

Note : You may have to enable the proxy module(s): sudo a2enmod proxy & sudo a2enmod proxy_http

This will serve the website http://myip/ocpu/library/myapp/www/ on mydomain.name .

Make sure to restart apache2 ( sudo service apache2 restart ) after editing the configuration and enabling the module(s).

Sources: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-use-apache-http-server-as-reverse-proxy-using-mod_proxy-extension