Compass Version 1.3

Setting Up Publicly Accessible Compass Servers

The Compass Server is a complete stand-alone web server, if started with the default parameters on a computer that is exposed to the internet then Compass will server the Compass web interface on port 80, just like any other web server. This is an OK if security is not an issue, however Compass does not have the same security stress testing that other web servers have, aka Apache. Anx Labs recommends that if you want to allow public access or if you want individuals at multiple locations to have access to your Compass Server that you use an Apache proxy server with Compass running behind the proxy.

To set up Compass to run behind a proxy server, first we need to adjust the Compass master config file to run on a port other than 80. We choose port 8080 for our example, but really any available port will work.

After changing the Compass Server's port number and restarting Compass we need to set up Apache. We'll assume you already have Apache up and running and listening on port 80. If you need help setting up Apache, we refer you to the Apache documentation. Now, we just need to set up a virtual host as a proxy server in the Apache configuration file. First we have to tell Apache that we have a virtual host on port 80:

NameVirtualHost *:80 

Then, we need to specify the configuration for our proxy server in a virtual host section like this:

<virtualHost *:80>
    ServerName hostname.com
    ProxyPass / localhost:8080/
    ProxyHTMLURLMap localhost:8080 /
    ProxyRequests off
    ProxyHTMLExtended On

    <location />
        RequestHeader unset Accept-Encoding
        ProxyPassReverse /
        SetOutputFilter proxy-html
    </location>

    ProxyPreserveHost On
    KeepAlive off
</VirtualHost>