Reverse proxy not working with MAMP stack

crystalenka

Hi!

I have set up a stack with Apache, MySQL 8, and PHP 8.1. When I try to navigate to the site address, I get a "failed to open page" error in Safari:

When I bypass the proxy by appending the https port it works fine.

What can I do to try to troubleshoot this? I'm testing this to see if I can move over from MAMP Pro for local development, but I am not a server admin/don't fully understand the behind the scenes setup so I'm not sure where to start. 😅

Thank you!

Crystal

Indigo

Hi @crystalenka — thanks for your question and sorry to hear it's not behaving for you.

I'm intrigued by your situation. Bypassing the proxy was an excellent test and narrows it down considerably.

It's a little late here so I will think further on it, but in the meantime, some things to check or try:

do you happen to have an entry for odmf.test in your /etc/hosts file? If so, try removing that.
try using a completely different domain name, one you've never used in MAMP Pro
try setting Indigo's reverse proxy ports to something other than 80/443 eg 81/444 (that can be done in Indigo's prefs/settings) and try accessing the site at eg https://mysite.test:444
try pinging the domain. In the terminal, run ping -c 5 https://odmf.test. This should get a response from 127.0.0.1 while Indigo is running, and more importantly should not get any response at all when Indigo is quit.
restart your Mac — I know, I know... nobody wants to do that. But if you've got a system update waiting, now's the time 🙂 In my experience, if you've been running other dev environments a restart can sometimes be the most pragmatic way to be completely sure nothing else is running on your Mac that's causing the issue.

I'd very much hope Indigo saves people having to learn nginx config and the like! However it may be necessary to touch that vicinity just a little in order to discover the underlying cause of this problem. The config file in question is at: ~/.indigo/stacks/system-stack/nginx_reverse_proxy/conf/sites-enabled/rp.odmf.test.conf. I guess it's useful just confirming its existence at this point.

crystalenka

Thanks for your quick reply!

do you happen to have an entry for odmf.test in your /etc/hosts file? If so, try removing that.

Nope, nothing there.

try using a completely different domain name, one you've never used in MAMP Pro

I've never used that domain in MAMP 🙂 it was odmf.local in before.

try setting Indigo's reverse proxy ports to something other than 80/443 eg 81/444 (that can be done in Indigo's prefs/settings) and try accessing the site at eg https://mysite.test:444

It works as long as I append the port.

try pinging the domain. In the terminal, run ping -c 5 https://odmf.test. This should get a response from 127.0.0.1 while Indigo is running, and more importantly should not get any response at all when Indigo is quit.

With Indigo running, I got the response ping: cannot resolve https://odmf.test: Unknown host
With Indigo quit, I got the same.

restart your Mac — I know, I know... nobody wants to do that. But if you've got a system update waiting, now's the time 🙂 In my experience, if you've been running other dev environments a restart can sometimes be the most pragmatic way to be completely sure nothing else is running on your Mac that's causing the issue.

I had done that already, but will give it another try just in case... Will update momentarily. 🙂

The config file in question is at: ~/.indigo/stacks/system-stack/nginx_reverse_proxy/conf/sites-enabled/rp.odmf.test.conf. I guess it's useful just confirming its existence at this point.

Yes, the file exists there.

Indigo

Hey, thanks for trying all those things! If I can just follow up on two of them...

crystalenka try setting Indigo's reverse proxy ports to something other than 80/443 eg 81/444 (that can be done in Indigo's prefs/settings) and try accessing the site at eg https://mysite.test:444

Just to confirm, you have tried changing the reverse proxy ports in the app preferences? This is different than the ports chosen or allocated in the Nginx or Apache site configuration.

That said, I don't think it'll help because the other info you supplied suggests the domain isn't even registered with your DNS.

try using a completely different domain name, one you've never used in MAMP Pro

Would you mind trying a totally new domain anyway? Doing this will ensure Indigo's Dnsmasq code should run afresh. Even just something silly like helloworld.test.

If that also fails, I will take a look at the logging around the Dnsmasq calls and see if it will be useful to read your logs, and/or what the next tests should be.

crystalenka

Unfortunately, restarting again did not resolve the issue. 🙁

crystalenka

Indigo Just to confirm, you have tried changing the reverse proxy ports in the app preferences? This is different than the ports chosen or allocated in the Nginx or Apache site configuration.

Correct, I used ports 85/448 just to be sure.

Indigo Would you mind trying a totally new domain anyway? Doing this will ensure Indigo's Dnsmasq code should run afresh. Even just something silly like helloworld.test.

I tried helloworld.testing — no dice.

Let me know if I can provide any logs on my end to help figure out the issue!

Indigo

Just had another thought — since you're coming from MAMP Pro, do you happen to have been using their Namo app? That would very likely conflict with DNSMasq which Indigo uses.

Also, I realised that simply sticking the following in your /etc/hosts would probably get you up and running (albeit without actually getting to the root cause of the problem):

127.0.0.1	odmf.test

Finally, sorry for the obvious question but I just kind of assumed it — can you confirm that the System Stack and your custom stack both start up successfully (green lights everywhere)?

crystalenka

Indigo Just had another thought — since you're coming from MAMP Pro, do you happen to have been using their Namo app? That would very likely conflict with DNSMasq which Indigo uses.

No Namo here!

Indigo Also, I realised that simply sticking the following in your /etc/hosts would probably get you up and running (albeit without actually getting to the root cause of the problem):

I'll give that a try, thank you 🙂

Indigo Finally, sorry for the obvious question but I just kind of assumed it — can you confirm that the System Stack and your custom stack both start up successfully (green lights everywhere)?

Confirmed, everything is working with all the nice green lights.

Indigo

Very, very strange. Thanks for your persistence — I'd really like to find out the cause. Leave it with me and I'll dig into the code and see if I can come up with some debugging steps from here.

Do let me know if the hosts entry gets you up and running.

crystalenka

Indigo Do let me know if the hosts entry gets you up and running.

The hosts entry did not unfortunately do the trick.

Indigo

(For anyone wondering what the outcome was, we continued our attempts to resolve this outside the forums, but as of now are still stuck!)