@arky can you confirm that http://box:3000/kiwix and http://box:3000/kiwix/ work for people who want to avoid the proxy for privacy reasons?

Overall: I'm greatly in favor of this PR if it provides a clean way to put a lid on the ongoing support nightmare of implementers/teachers/users typing in http://box/kiwix and getting Extremely Frustrated by the (up until now) non-natural need for a trailing slash.

@holta To be precise. This patch only fixes the Apache httpd http://box/kiwix using mod_proxy and mod_rewrite.

The http://box:3000 addresses are served by kiwix-serve process. You might need to fix those in separate issue or PR.

#980 (comment)

FYI quick testing shows that http://box:3000/kiwix does not work (when there is no trailing slash).

This is unfortunate, but as @arky suggests above: this problem might be built into kiwix-serve ?

Tested flawlessly on Ubuntu 18.04 and 16.04 and Raspbian Lite.

@tim-moody, @georgejhunt & @jvonau please suggest any further revisions/improvements building upon this.

Tested flawlessly on Ubuntu 18.04 and 16.04 and Raspbian Lite.

Clarif- on Ubuntu 18.04.1 http://box/kiwix2 currently/correctly returns:

Not Found
The requested URL /kiwix2 was not found on this server.
Apache/2.4.29 (Ubuntu) Server at 10.8.0.x Port 80

Likewise on Ubuntu 16.04.5...

...
Apache/2.4.18 (Ubuntu) Server at 10.8.0.y Port 80

Likewise on the lastest / apt-updated Raspbian Lite...

...
Apache/2.4.25 (Raspbian) Server at 10.8.0.z Port 80

If the goal of this PR is simply to convert the kiwix proxy from box/kiwix/ to box/kiwix then the changes to the apache config are not necessary. Only the default kiwix_url needs to be changed.

In addition adding a ProxyPassReverse when kiwix does its own reverse proxy internally is at best unnecessary and at worst will have unintended consequences. Nor do I believe the ProxyPreserveHost On is beneficial when host is not part of any the proxy urls.

If the desire is to change the proxy url from /kiwix/ to /kiwix then simply changing the url_prefix should do this. This will break menuing, but that can be fixed rather than patched with a RewriteRule.

And none of this has anything to do with what kiwix does on port 3000.

Actually I was wrong about the need to rewrite to provide box.lan/kiwix access. However, the following kiwix.conf is sufficient:

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^/kiwix$ /kiwix/ [R]

ProxyPass /kiwix/ http://127.0.0.1:3000/kiwix/

Thanks so much Tim! @arky can you perhaps offer a compromise PR in the coming 24h if you have time?

@arky can you perhaps offer a compromise PR in the coming 24h if you have time?

Or is PR #985 perhaps enough?