Running ArchivesSpace under a prefix

Important Note: Prefixes do NOT work properly in versions between 2.0.1 and 2.2.2

This document describes a simple approach for those wishing to deviate from the recommended practice of running each user-facing ArchivesSpace application on its own subdomain, and instead serve each application under a prefix, e.g.

http://aspace.myarchive.org/staff
http://aspace.myarchive.org/public

This configuration described in this document is one possible approach, and to keep things simple the following are assumed:

ArchivesSpace is running on a single Linux server
The server is running the Apache 2.2+ webserver

Unless otherwise stated, it is assumed that you have root access on your machines, and all commands are to be run as root (or with sudo).

Step 1: Setup proxies in your Apache configuration

The following edits can be made in the httpd.conf file itself, or in an included file:

ProxyPass /staff http://localhost:8080/staff
ProxyPassReverse /staff http://localhost:8080/
ProxyPass /public http://localhost:8081/public
ProxyPassReverse /public http://localhost:8081/

Now restart Apache.

Step 2: Install and configure ArchivesSpace

Follow the instructions in the main README to download and install ArchivesSpace.

Open the file archivesspace/config/config.rb and add the following lines:

AppConfig[:frontend_proxy_url] = 'http://aspace.myarchive.org/staff'
AppConfig[:public_proxy_url] = 'http://aspace.myarchive.org/public'

(Note: These lines should NOT begin with a ‘#’ character.)

Start ArchivesSpace.

Step 3: (Optional) Lock down ports 8080 and 8081

By default, the staff and public applications are accessible on ports 8080 and 8081

http://aspace.myarchive.org:8080
http://aspace.myarchive.org:8081

Since these are not the URLs at which users should access the application, you will probably want to close them off. See README_HTTPS for more information on closing ports using iptables.