Inklings: Using mod_rewrite to pass REMOTE_USER on to mod

Using mod_rewrite to pass REMOTE_USER on to mod_proxy in Apache

🕑 2012-09-24T18:48:14+00:00 | edit

This was wrecking my head horribly earlier because I kept hitting the limit imposed by LimitInternalRecursion without realising why. It turns out that I was missing the following:

RewriteCond %{IS_SUBREQ} ^false$

That ensures that the rewriting to copy the value of the REMOTE_USER environment variable is done once and once only. Here’s the full ruleset:

RequestHeader Unset X-Forwarded-User
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{IS_SUBREQ} ^false$
RewriteCond %{LA-U:REMOTE_USER} (.+)
RewriteRule .* - [E=RU:%1]
RequestHeader Set X-Forwarded-User %{RU}e env=RU

With luck, this’ll save somebody else from wasting their time like I ended up doing.