Using Apache as proxy in port-forwarding role (inward to misbehaving NATted devices)

[Roger Heflin]

Philip Prindeville wrote:
> Howdy.
> 
> I have a machine with a couple of NIC's that is both my firewall and 
> HTTP server.  It's running FC8.
> 
> It has Apache installed on it.
> 
> Behind the firewall, are various devices and servers.  All of the 
> devices on my LAN are NATted using an unroutable address.
> 
> One of the devices is an embedded controller of sorts that has an 
> extremely poorly written web server.
> 
> I can't simply port-forward (using iptables) a port (other than 80) to 
> this embedded controller, because it generates URL's that look like 
> "http://192.168.0.5/..." and it's very broken in that respect.  But I 
> need to be able to browse this server, even when off the local LAN.  I'd 
> use VPN, except not all of our devices (including cellphones) support 
> our VPN capabilities.
> 
> So I was thinking about writing a CGI that grabs pages from this device, 
> parses them, and then does URL fix-up so that the URL's work when 
> accessed on the HTTP server/firewall using the public address (and name 
> that resolves to that address).
> 
> Anyone have any pointers/examples to get me started that might save some 
> time?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> -Philip
> 

You might want to take a look at squid it is a proxy server and has a way to put 
a user script/program in that will allow it to change the URL.

                                  Roger