[Drupal] Trouble installing Drupal in a forced SSL environment with a content-switching load balancer.

[Gaddie, Herbert (Luke)]

@Christopher & Joe,

Sorry for the delayed reply. I just now got a chance to play with this some more.

While reverse_proxy didn't fix the issue I was was having (it relies on a header such as X-Forwarded-Proto being sent from the LB to indicate SSL traffic, whereas ours doesn't send this header) you guys did point me in the right direction. In the end, what I had to do was set $base_url at line 281 in settings.php. Since doing so, the installation went through without a hitch. I haven't tried it in a multi-site setting yet, but I doubt it will give us any trouble.

Thanks for your help!
Luke Gaddie

Web Application Developer
The Ohio State University
OCIO Customer Solutions Office of Academic Affairs
464 Baker Systems Engineering, 1971 Neil Avenue, Columbus, OH 43210
(614) 688-1784 Office / (614) 905-1736 Mobile
gaddie.3 at osu.edu<mailto:gaddie.3 at osu.edu> osu.edu<http://osu.edu>

From: <Bondra>, Joseph Bondra <bondra.4 at osu.edu<mailto:bondra.4 at osu.edu>>
Reply-To: Drupal users list <drupal at lists.service.ohio-state.edu<mailto:drupal at lists.service.ohio-state.edu>>
Date: Monday, April 8, 2013 8:55 AM
To: Drupal users list <drupal at lists.service.ohio-state.edu<mailto:drupal at lists.service.ohio-state.edu>>
Subject: Re: [Drupal] Trouble installing Drupal in a forced SSL environment with a content-switching load balancer.

Hi Luke,

Have you tried setting the $conf[‘reverse_proxy’] = TRUE in settings.php? There are a few reverse proxy settings for Drupal that might help.

http://drupal.org/node/425990 (It’s mentioned in the comments…)

…starting around line 402 in the standard settings.php, you’ll find some commented out reverse proxy stuff.

I have no idea if these will do anything, but it’s something that I was looking into since I might have to deal with this myself eventually. Hopefully someone else knows more about this…


~Joe


From: drupal-bounces at lists.service.ohio-state.edu<mailto:drupal-bounces at lists.service.ohio-state.edu> [mailto:drupal-bounces at lists.service.ohio-state.edu] On Behalf Of Gaddie, Herbert (Luke)
Sent: Monday, April 08, 2013 2:05 AM
To: drupal at lists.service.ohio-state.edu<mailto:drupal at lists.service.ohio-state.edu>
Subject: [Drupal] Trouble installing Drupal in a forced SSL environment with a content-switching load balancer.


I've already submitted a bug report<http://drupal.org/node/481758#comment-7209478> on some of the issues I'm having with this, but I'm curious to see if anyone else has some input on the issue I'm having.

Our server is set up behind a Citrix NetScaler load balancer that enforces SSL through Content switching so that:

  *   Any requests made to http://example.com are automatically redirected to https://example.com.
  *   Any requests made to https://example.com are forwarded through to the web server via HTTP, then the NetScaler forwards the response back to the requester via HTTPS (SSL Offloading).

In the end, the path that all HTTP traffic takes is as such: User -(443)> NetScaler -(80)> Web Server -(80)> NetScaler -(443)> User



Now, the problem that I'm facing is in installing Drupal. During installation, I'm getting these two errors:

  *   In error.log: PHP Fatal error: Call to undefined function field_attach_load() in /var/www/it/includes/entity.inc on line 321, referer: https://it.osu.edu/install.php?profile=standard&locale=en
  *   In the browser: An AJAX HTTP request terminated abnormally. Debugging information follows. Path: http://it.osu.edu/install.php?profile=standard&locale=en&id=1&op=do StatusText: ResponseText: ReadyState: 4

This error is thrown almost immediately (.5-1 second) after entering the database details and continuing to the next (progress bar) screen.



The issue seems to be spawning from the fact that Drupal is attempting to perform a HTTP AJAX request, as opposed to a HTTPS request. Due to our network setup, all web traffic to the end user is done via HTTPS and all traffic between the NetScaler is done via HTTP.



There's a ton more information, including what I've tried and specific environment information, in the bug report. I would love to hear any input that anyone has on this!



Thanks,

-Luke
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