NGINX alongside Apache for better analytics (& Captive Portal too?)

[holta]

Ref #210 @georgejhunt & @tim-moody are exploring.

If this works in the end, Apache might possibly be preserved alongside.

(Compare @julianharty's web-proxy-for-analytics approach?)

[holta]

See @georgejhunt's ongoing work here for IIAB 6.5 or IIAB 6.6 — which MIGHT even permit Moodle/WordPress/Elgg to work(*) cleanly campuswide:

#285 Tinynginx
#286 AWStats nginx
#287 KA Lite nginx
#288 Kiwix nginx
#289 Munin nginx
#290 Nextcloud nginx
#291 OSM nginx
#292 WordPress nginx

(*) via WAN side of IIAB server, if NGINX is essentially translating headers of most all http traffic from http://localhost/x to http://campuswide-server-name/x etc).

[holta]

FYI there have been many attempts here, since this ticket was opened 26 months ago.

Here are some of the latest:

• PR Nginx shim for local_vars_big #2009 "Nginx shim for local_vars_big" (by @georgejhunt)
• PR gh_nginx_2: NGINX alongside Apache (by @georgejhunt, being reworked by @jvonau) #2017 (refines the above, by @jvonau)

[holta]

Time to close this soon, if NGINX is converging properly for IIAB 7.1 anticipated to be released 2020-01-30 ?

Note that Apache will supported alongside, for the indefinite future, or at least for a while to come~

Refs:
#1268 AWStats community patterns/analytics/statistics/metrics
#1762 IIAB Community Analytics framework, above & beyond AWStats (likely Matomo?)
#2052 NGINX (main PR)

[holta]

TO DO: substantially clean up NGINX's README.md here...
https://github.com/iiab/iiab/tree/master/roles/nginx#transition-to-nginx

Starting with things like PR #2141's https://github.com/jvonau/iiab/blob/restarts/roles/nginx/README.md

[holta]

@jvonau @georgejhunt @tim-moody

Is it almost time to declare victory now, closing this ticket in favor of smaller NGINX-associated cleanup tickets going forward?

[holta]

Not sure whether to declare victory.

So I'll move this to IIAB 7.2's milestone for now.

[jvonau]

April -> Sept either it good enough for 7.2 and open new issues defining specific remaining issues.

[holta]

open new issues defining specific remaining issues.

Not a bad idea.

Also rename https://github.com/iiab/iiab/tree/master/roles/nginx#transition-to-nginx from "Transit to NGINX" to "NGINX README" (as with other roles) when the transition is more complete.

[jvonau]

close