Enabling HTTPS for Seafile (Windows)

EDIT: Video tutorial can be found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRNCpR_mSSs&feature=youtu.be

While there has been documentation on how to enable HTTPS for seafile in *nix environment. There is no documentation for doing this on windows.   Looking at the nginx implementation, it is essentially doing a reverse proxy. This is something that IIS+URL Rewrite can easily achieve!   Before we proceed, take a look and understand the reverse proxy requirements found at https://github.com/haiwen/seafile/wiki/Enable-Https-on-Seafile-web-with-nginx   I will not go into steps on how to generate your own SSL cert, but rather focus on how to use IIS to reverse proxy the necessary ports.   Requirements

1. Standard implementation of seafile ONLY
   1. ie seafile listens on the following port: 8000, 8082, 10001, 12001
2. HTTP requests to port 80 will be redirected to HTTPS calls on port 443
3. HTTPS requests on port 443 will be treated as follows
   1. if it starts with seafhttp, send it to seafile port 8082
   2. otherwise send it to seafile port 8000

Step by Step Guide

1. Install seafile on the server
2. Install IIS with default options
3. Run IIS Manager
4. Install Web Platform Installer (WebPI)
5. Inside WebPI, install URLRewrite
6. Create 2 websites, pointing to separate physical folders. Ensure the https website is associated with a valid SSL certificate
7. Edit the web.config for the HTTP site
   

   <?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?> <configuration> <system.webServer> <rewrite> <rules> <rule name=”Redirect to HTTPS” stopProcessing=”true”> <match url=”(.*)” /> <action type=”Redirect” url=”https://{HTTP_HOST}/{R:1}” /> </rule> </rules> </rewrite> </system.webServer> </configuration>

8. Edit the web.config for the HTTPS site
   

   <configuration> <system.webServer> <rewrite> <rules> <rule name=”seafhttp” stopProcessing=”true”> <match url=”seafhttp/(.*)” /> <action type=”Rewrite” url=”http://127.0.0.1:8082/{R:1}” appendQueryString=”false” logRewrittenUrl=”true” /> </rule> <rule name=”Reverse Proxy” patternSyntax=”ECMAScript” stopProcessing=”true”> <match url=”(.*)” /> <!– Redirect all requests to non-HTTPS site. –> <action type=”Rewrite” url=”http://localhost:8000/{R:1}” logRewrittenUrl=”true” /> </rule> </rules> </rewrite> </system.webServer> </configuration>

9. Enjoy a secure version of seafile 🙂