BigDataServer behind a reverse-proxy

[lmo-reira]

Hi,

I'm trying to setup the bigdataserver behind a reverse-proxy, without success until now... I guess it's supposed to work, but maybe there is something specific to do to achieve my goal ?

My installation configuration

• I'm running the bigdataserver on a virtual machine (debian stretch) with the following command : java -Xmx4G -jar bigdataserver.jar -d BigDataViewer/images.txt -s 192.168.50.100 -p 8080

• In the output, I see the test images are loaded :

  2020-04-22 13:27:02.096:INFO:bs.BigDataServer:main: Dataset added: {test1, /path/to/my/datasets/imagetest1.xml}
  2020-04-22 13:27:02.097:INFO:bs.BigDataServer:main: Dataset added: {test2, /path/to/my/datasets/imagetest2.xml}

• The bigdataserver is running behind an apache reverse-proxy with a basic config (ubuntu 16.04) :

  <VirtualHost *:80>
  ServerName bigdataserv.mysite.net
  ProxyPreserveHost On
  ProxyRequests Off
  ProxyPass    / http://192.168.50.100:8080/
  ProxyPassReverse / http://192.168.50.100:8080/
  ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/bigdataserver-error.log
  CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/bigdataserver-access.log combined
  </VirtualHost>

• On the reverse proxy machine, I got this output :

  $ curl -k http://192.168.56.111:8081/json/
  {
  "test2": {
      "id": "test2",
      "description": "NotImplemented",
      "thumbnailUrl": "http://192.168.50.100:8080/test2/png",
      "datasetUrl": "http://192.168.50.100:8080/test2/"
  },
  "test1": {
      "id": "test1",
      "description": "NotImplemented",
      "thumbnailUrl": "http://192.168.50.100:8080/test1/png",
      "datasetUrl": "http://192.168.50.100:8080/test1/"
  }

• When I run the same command from my laptop, I've got the exact same output as above :

  $ curl -k bigdataserv.mysite.net/json/
  {
  "test2": {
      "id": "test2",
      "description": "NotImplemented",
      "thumbnailUrl": "http://192.168.50.100:8080/test2/png",
      "datasetUrl": "http://192.168.50.100:8080/test2/"
  },
  "test1": {
      "id": "test1",
      "description": "NotImplemented",
      "thumbnailUrl": "http://192.168.50.100:8080/test1/png",
      "datasetUrl": "http://192.168.50.100:8080/test1/"
  }

• If I go to http://bigdataserv.mysite.net/test2/png with my web browser on my laptop, the image is here and accessible.

The problem

I can load the url (e.g http://bigdataserv.mysite.net) on the bigdataviewer plugin on ImageJ, but I don't have any images as a result.

When I double click on any image, I got this log output :

reverse-proxy-bigdataviewer.log

Does anybody have any experience with this ?

Best regards,

[tpietzsch]

I have no experience with this, but probably it's the following. The json has URLs for thumbnailUrl and datasetUrl that point to http://192.168.50.100:8080/test2/png and http://192.168.50.100:8080/test2/ As you noted, these would have to have 192.168.50.100:8080 replaced by bigdataserv.mysite.net. There is currently no mechanism in bigdataserver to do this replacement.

As a workaround, you can open the datasetUrl with the replaced address in a browser (e.g., http://bigdataserv.mysite.net/test2/). This should give you a XML formatted document. Save this to a file dataset.xml. In that file, you will have at the top a <ImageLoader> section, something like

<ImageLoader format="bdv.remote">
  <baseUrl>
    http://192.168.50.100:8080/test2/
  </baseUrl>
</ImageLoader>

Replace the 192.168.50.100:8080 by bigdataserv.mysite.net. Then open dataset.xml through Fiji > Plugins > BigDataViewer > Open XML/HDF5 This way, you should at least be able to look at individual datasets, although the "Browse BigDataServer" will not work.

[tpietzsch]

I did a quick fix that now allows to replace the base URL with this commit https://github.com/bigdataviewer/bigdataviewer-server/commit/f53a3dccd4a1f6c70c91c200d2105e50292e7277

To create a bigdataserver jar that hast this option, check out the latest master. Build with

mvn clean package -P fatjar

This should create a fat jar (target/bigdataviewer-server-2.1.1-SNAPSHOT.jar)

This has an additional parameter flag -b baseURL.

So your example you should be able to do now with java -Xmx4G -jar bigdataserver.jar -d BigDataViewer/images.txt -s 192.168.50.100 -p 8080 -b http://bigdataserv.mysite.net

[lmo-reira]

Hi,

Thank you very much, it works perfectly with this new version !

Without this fix, I was about to run a script parsing the json to generate a web page with the image preview and the xml link, but finally it will not be needed !

Again, thank you very much !