# Everything but ood server's reverse proxying working for remote desktop

**URL:** <https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/everything-but-ood-servers-reverse-proxying-working-for-remote-desktop/2169>\
**Category:** Get Help\
**Created:** [July 9, 2022, 12:46am UTC](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/everything-but-ood-servers-reverse-proxying-working-for-remote-desktop/2169 "2022-07-09T00:46:38Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 7\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![ekeever1](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/discourse.openondemand.org/ekeever1/32/1187_2.png) [@ekeever1](https://discourse.openondemand.org/u/ekeever1)\
**Post date:** [July 9, 2022, 12:46am UTC](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/everything-but-ood-servers-reverse-proxying-working-for-remote-desktop/2169/1 "2022-07-09T00:46:38Z")

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I have been fighting to install OOD and get a working remote desktop for weeks (while the instructions for setting up OOD itself are detailed and accurate, those for setting up remote desktop seem to be a nearly nonexistent afterthought). We’ve reached the point at which I can login, fire a desktop off on a cluster node, and it successfully starts the VNC desktop session.

I can even use ssh to proxy the node’s VNC server listening port back to my desktop and open a desktop VNC viewer.

However the ‘open viewer’ option in the browsers fails instantly. The only clue I have been able to find is in the OOD server logs,

> =\> httpd/access\_ssl.log \<==  
> xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx - - [08/Jul/2022:16:45:16 -0700] “GET /rnode/axis1/44232/websockify HTTP/1.1” 404 196 “-” “Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86\_64; rv:91.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/91.0”

Other than this one line, I haven’t found anything to go on, and that’s not enough for me to even begin to guess more than the obvious (something is not installed and/or not configured) and that it may be websockify. Has anyone encountered this? Or setup a fully working remote browser-vnc desktop?

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**Author:** ![jeff.ohrstrom](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/discourse.openondemand.org/jeff.ohrstrom/32/136_2.png) [@jeff.ohrstrom](https://discourse.openondemand.org/u/jeff.ohrstrom)\
**Post date:** [July 11, 2022, 1:25pm UTC](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/everything-but-ood-servers-reverse-proxying-working-for-remote-desktop/2169/2 "2022-07-11T13:25:28Z")

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Hi and welcome!

Yes we’re trying to revamp our documentation. I believe this is the bit that’s relevant to you

[https://osc.github.io/ood-documentation/latest/app-development/interactive/setup/enable-reverse-proxy.html#steps-to-enable-in-apache](https://osc.github.io/ood-documentation/latest/app-development/interactive/setup/enable-reverse-proxy.html#steps-to-enable-in-apache)

These 3 settings. Be sure `uri` settings are enabled and the `host_regex` matches what your hosts (`axis1`) look like.

```auto
host_regex: '[\w.-]+\.my_center\.edu'
node_uri: '/node'
rnode_uri: '/rnode'

```

Also - it looks like that’s not a FQDN - axis1 or it’s missing bits of your domain, so you may need the `set_host` configurations also described in that page.

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**Author:** ![ekeever1](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/discourse.openondemand.org/ekeever1/32/1187_2.png) [@ekeever1](https://discourse.openondemand.org/u/ekeever1)\
**Post date:** [July 14, 2022, 9:58am UTC](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/everything-but-ood-servers-reverse-proxying-working-for-remote-desktop/2169/3 "2022-07-14T09:58:32Z")

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I’ve followed through the proxy setup commands, and using Netcat I’ve demonstrated to myself a working proxy (ood.nic.uo/node/5555 forwards my browser request to a listening nc) and reverse proxy (/rnode/XXX causes a waiting “echo ‘hello world’ | nc -l 5555” to emit “hello world” back in my browser).

So the proxy setup works (yay) but still the browser noVNC just cries “failed to connect” (boo). I feel like Zeno… it’s so close to working it hurts.

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**Author:** ![jeff.ohrstrom](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/discourse.openondemand.org/jeff.ohrstrom/32/136_2.png) [@jeff.ohrstrom](https://discourse.openondemand.org/u/jeff.ohrstrom)\
**Post date:** [July 14, 2022, 2:20pm UTC](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/everything-but-ood-servers-reverse-proxying-working-for-remote-desktop/2169/4 "2022-07-14T14:20:50Z")

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Here are some additional questions.

- Can you confirm when you use a browser that you still get these 404s?
- Are you using a proxy, like a load balancer in front of OOD?
- I just want to confirm when you did an NC test you used `axis1` like the jobs do. Not the FQDN with a domain, just the hostname as is as you would see it in a url that OOD would generate.

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**Author:** ![ekeever1](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/discourse.openondemand.org/ekeever1/32/1187_2.png) [@ekeever1](https://discourse.openondemand.org/u/ekeever1)\
**Post date:** [July 15, 2022, 2:28am UTC](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/everything-but-ood-servers-reverse-proxying-working-for-remote-desktop/2169/5 "2022-07-15T02:28:48Z")

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I just checked and it is the host name that is the problem.

I opened the noVNC advanced settings and edited the host target from ‘axis1’ to ‘axis1.stor’ and it worked.

However I have

- entered set\_host (why not use hostname -f?), rerun the configuration generator and restarted httpd
- put .stor first on the /etc/resolv.conf domain search list and restarted httpd
- put “172.17.10.1 axis1.stor” into /etc/hosts and restarted httpd  
And none of them have any effect, the host is flat ‘axis1’ which does not work.

Ultimately following

> [@How does batch\_connect set\_host affect app/VNC behavior?](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/how-does-batch-connect-set-host-affect-app-vnc-behavior/1802):
>
> In /etc/ood/config/apps/bc\_desktop/submit/my\_submit.yml.erb for OOD1, this line was commented out: set\_host: "host=$(hostname)" Using the same file in OOD2, the desktop app didn’t run, with a novnc error, until the above line was restored to the file. Also (in OOD2 only), on the page to launch the app, the Host link (for shell) shows the short name of the compute node and doesn’t work without the set\_host line, but with the set\_host line shows the FQDN and works. (Outside of OOD, ssh from th…

I directly edited set\_host into  
/var/www/ood/apps/sys/bc\_desktop/submit.yml.erb  
and restarted and it works: I am able to launch a remote session and get a gnome desktop appear in my browser. Horray! There’s some other things that need to be worked out but it looks like it’s alive.

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**Author:** ![jeff.ohrstrom](https://sea1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/user_avatar/discourse.openondemand.org/jeff.ohrstrom/32/136_2.png) [@jeff.ohrstrom](https://discourse.openondemand.org/u/jeff.ohrstrom)\
**Post date:** [July 15, 2022, 1:01pm UTC](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/everything-but-ood-servers-reverse-proxying-working-for-remote-desktop/2169/6 "2022-07-15T13:01:57Z")

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Glad to see you got it!

> [@ekeever1](#):
>
> I directly edited set\_host into  
> /var/www/ood/apps/sys/bc\_desktop/submit.yml.erb

Make the changes here instead. The file above will be overwritten when you update.

`/etc/ood/config/apps/bc_desktop/submit.yml.erb`

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**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/flex015/uploads/osc/original/2X/b/bae70bd0ed39a3ae769c2108155f4cb3e9da8385.png) [@system](https://discourse.openondemand.org/u/system)\
**Post date:** [January 11, 2023, 1:02pm UTC](https://discourse.openondemand.org/t/everything-but-ood-servers-reverse-proxying-working-for-remote-desktop/2169/7 "2023-01-11T13:02:46Z")

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