This tutorial is a community contribution and is not supported by the Open WebUI team. It serves only as a demonstration on how to customize Open WebUI for your specific use case. Want to contribute? Check out the contributing tutorial.
HAProxy Configuration for Open WebUI
HAProxy (High Availability Proxy) is specialized load-balancing and reverse proxy solution that is highly configurable and designed to handle large amounts of connections with a relatively low resource footprint. for more information, please see: https://www.haproxy.org/
Install HAProxy and Let's Encrypt
First, install HAProxy and Let's Encrypt's certbot:
Redhat derivatives
sudo dnf install haproxy certbot openssl -y
Debian derivatives
sudo apt install haproxy certbot openssl -y
HAProxy Configuration Basics
HAProxy's configuration is by default stored in /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg. This file contains all the configuration directives that determine how HAProxy will operate.
The base configuration for HAProxy to work with Open WebUI is pretty simple.
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
# Global settings
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
global
# to have these messages end up in /var/log/haproxy.log you will
# need to:
#
# 1) configure syslog to accept network log events. This is done
# by adding the '-r' option to the SYSLOGD_OPTIONS in
# /etc/sysconfig/syslog
#
# 2) configure local2 events to go to the /var/log/haproxy.log
# file. A line like the following can be added to
# /etc/sysconfig/syslog
#
# local2.* /var/log/haproxy.log
#
log 127.0.0.1 local2
chroot /var/lib/haproxy
pidfile /var/run/haproxy.pid
maxconn 4000
user haproxy
group haproxy
daemon
#adjust the dh-param if too low
tune.ssl.default-dh-param 2048
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
# common defaults that all the 'listen' and 'backend' sections will
# use if not designated in their block
#---------------------------------------------------------------------
defaults
mode http
log global
option httplog
option dontlognull
option http-server-close
option forwardfor #except 127.0.0.0/8
option redispatch
retries 3
timeout http-request 300s
timeout queue 2m
timeout connect 120s
timeout client 10m
timeout server 10m
timeout http-keep-alive 120s
timeout check 10s
maxconn 3000
#http
frontend web
#Non-SSL
bind 0.0.0.0:80
#SSL/TLS
bind 0.0.0.0:443 ssl crt /path/to/ssl/folder/
#Let's Encrypt SSL
acl letsencrypt-acl path_beg /.well-known/acme-challenge/
use_backend letsencrypt-backend if letsencrypt-acl
#Subdomain method
acl chat-acl hdr(host) -i subdomain.domain.tld
#Path Method
acl chat-acl path_beg /owui/
use_backend owui_chat if chat-acl
#Pass SSL Requests to Lets Encrypt
backend letsencrypt-backend
server letsencrypt 127.0.0.1:8688
#OWUI Chat
backend owui_chat
# add X-FORWARDED-FOR
option forwardfor
# add X-CLIENT-IP
http-request add-header X-CLIENT-IP %[src]
http-request set-header X-Forwarded-Proto https if { ssl_fc }
server chat <ip>:3000
You will see that we have ACL records (routers) for both Open WebUI and Let's Encrypt. To use WebSocket with OWUI, you need to have an SSL configured, and the easiest way to do that is to use Let's Encrypt.
You can use either the subdomain method or the path method for routing traffic to Open WebUI. The subdomain method requires a dedicated subdomain (e.g., chat.yourdomain.com), while the path method allows you to access Open WebUI through a specific path on your domain (e.g., yourdomain.com/owui/). Choose the method that best suits your needs and update the configuration accordingly.
You will need to expose port 80 and 443 to your HAProxy server. These ports are required for Let's Encrypt to validate your domain and for HTTPS traffic. You will also need to ensure your DNS records are properly configured to point to your HAProxy server. If you are running HAProxy at home, you will need to use port forwarding in your router to forward ports 80 and 443 to your HAProxy server.
Issuing SSL Certificates with Let's Encrypt
Before starting HAProxy, you will want to generate a self signed certificate to use as a placeholder until Let's Encrypt issues a proper one. Here's how to generate a self-signed certificate:
openssl req -x509 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout /tmp/haproxy.key -out /tmp/haproxy.crt -days 3650 -nodes -subj "/CN=localhost"
Then combine the key and certificate into a PEM file that HAProxy can use:
cat /tmp/haproxy.crt /tmp/haproxy.key > /etc/haproxy/certs/haproxy.pem
Make sure you update the HAProxy configuration based on your needs and configuration.
Once you have your HAProxy configuration set up, you can use certbot to obtain and manage your SSL certificates. Certbot will handle the validation process with Let's Encrypt and automatically update your certificates when they are close to expiring (assuming you use the certbot auto-renewal service).
You can validate the HAProxy configuration by running haproxy -c -f /etc/haproxy/haproxy.cfg. If there are no errors, you can start HAProxy with systemctl start haproxy and verify it's running with systemctl status haproxy.
To ensure HAProxy starts with the system, systemctl enable haproxy.
When you have HAProxy configured, you can use Let's encrypt to issue your valid SSL certificate. First, you will need to register with Let's Encrypt. You should only need to do this one time:
certbot register --agree-tos --email your@email.com --non-interactive
Then you can request your certificate:
certbot certonly -n --standalone --preferred-challenges http --http-01-port-8688 -d yourdomain.com
Once the certificate is issued, you will need to merge the certificate and private key files into a single PEM file that HAProxy can use.
cat /etc/letsencrypt/live/{domain}/fullchain.pem /etc/letsencrypt/live/{domain}/privkey.pem > /etc/haproxy/certs/{domain}.pem
chmod 600 /etc/haproxy/certs/{domain}.pem
chown haproxy:haproxy /etc/haproxy/certs/{domain}.pem
You can then restart HAProxy to apply the new certificate:
systemctl restart haproxy
HAProxy Manager (Easy Deployment Option)
If you would like to have something manage your HAProxy configuration and Let's Encrypt SSLs automatically, I have written a simple python script and created a docker container you can use to create and manage your HAProxy config and manage the Let's Encrypt certificate lifecycle.
https://github.com/shadowdao/haproxy-manager
Please do not expose port 8000 publicly if you use the script or container!