Apache2.2 logging "Real" Client IP's - Mod_CloudFlare

Ok, we were able to resolve this issue with the following:

1) Logging real client IP's in apache logs:

Adding "%{X-Forwarded-For}i" to the LogFormat config in httpd.conf worked:

LogFormat "%{X-Forwarded-For}i - %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" combined
LogFormat "%{X-Forwarded-For}i - %h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b" common

2) Passing the real client IP to php

I talked this over with a developer on staff and we were able to use php's auto_prepend_file to make this happen:

.htaccess file:

php_value auto_prepend_file proxy.php

proxy.php contents:

Note: We switched out $trusted_proxy with the floating IP address of the load balancer.

This works as expected.

Note that this is very much a workaround (think bandaids/ducktape) until the code can be updated or a more robust solution can be found. I, for one, am hoping for a mod_f5 🙂

This link provided the inspiration for that code: https://devcentral.f5.com/questions/apache22-logging-quotreal-quot-client-ips-mod_cloudflare