Forward Proxy config for iPads for soon to go Live site

Hi, I’m an nginx newbie and I need to configure it as an externally
available forward proxy for manually configured iPads running an iOS app
to
test a soon to go Live website.
You cannot change host files on an iPad but we can ask our external
testers
to configure the proxy settings manually.
The old website is still “live” and has the old IP DNS’s but we want to
use
the same domain name but pointing to the new IP address.
I have installed nginx-1.4.2-1.el6.ngx.x86_64.rpm and it’s up and
running
but I need some help in how to get the configuration setup.
I will like to resolve to this domain using the /etc/hosts or any other
way
that I could accomplish it and forward the requests to the new site.
We cannot switch the DNS yet or assign a new DNS name to this IP as it’s
all
ready to go with the original named SSL certs etc
Any help will be really appreciated.
Thanks.

Posted at Nginx Forum:

Hello!

On Fri, Oct 04, 2013 at 11:17:09AM -0400, IggyDolby wrote:

Hi, I’m an nginx newbie and I need to configure it as an externally
available forward proxy for manually configured iPads running an iOS app to
test a soon to go Live website.

Just a disclaimer:

Please note that nginx is reverse proxy, it’s not forward proxy,
and it was never designed to be. While it could be possible to
configure nginx as a forward proxy, it’s unsupported and may have
problems, including security ones.

You cannot change host files on an iPad but we can ask our external testers
to configure the proxy settings manually.
The old website is still “live” and has the old IP DNS’s but we want to use
the same domain name but pointing to the new IP address.
I have installed nginx-1.4.2-1.el6.ngx.x86_64.rpm and it’s up and running
but I need some help in how to get the configuration setup.
I will like to resolve to this domain using the /etc/hosts or any other way
that I could accomplish it and forward the requests to the new site.
We cannot switch the DNS yet or assign a new DNS name to this IP as it’s all
ready to go with the original named SSL certs etc

If you already have nginx acting as a proxy for you (presumably
using proxy_pass with variables and a resolver, if /etc/hosts
doesn’t work for you out of the box), an override of a particular
hostname can be easily done using an upstream{} block with a given
name.

http://nginx.org/r/upstream


Maxim D.
http://nginx.org/en/donation.html

Thanks for your reply, would you suggest to use some other open source
proxy
like Squid or Varnish to use as forward proxy?

Posted at Nginx Forum:

Hello!

On Fri, Oct 04, 2013 at 11:44:41AM -0400, IggyDolby wrote:

Thanks for your reply, would you suggest to use some other open source proxy
like Squid or Varnish to use as forward proxy?

Squid is known to work.

Varnish, as far as I can tell, isn’t a forward proxy either, much
like nginx.


Maxim D.
http://nginx.org/en/donation.html