help with web proxying for anonymous rsync

[Todd Harris]

Hi all - 

I've searched long and hard for some docs on configuring a web proxy for
rsync.  This is probably in part an apache config question so I apologize if
this is in the wrong forum.

What I would like to do is provide anonymous rsync access to a handful of
IPs via a web proxy so I don't have to punch additional holes in my
firewall.  In other words, I'd like to use rsync over port 80, ProxyPass'ing
a requested url to the rsyncd.  It seems like this should work...  (I'd
rather not tunnel rsyncd via SSH since I do not want to provide these users
with accounts).

1. I have something like this in my httpd.conf

   ProxyPass  /rsync-module/   rsync://localhost:873/rsync-module

2. I have a rsyncd.conf that looks something like this

log file = /var/log/rsyncd.log
pid file = /etc/rsyncd.pid
[rsync-module]
        path = /path/to/my/module
        # hosts allow = x.x.x.x
        timeout = 200

3. Next, I set my RSYNC_PROXY environment variable to:

   setenv RSYNC_PROXY my.machine.org:80

4. Finally, I send a request to rsync as

   rsync my.machine.org::rsync-module

In the httpd acess log I see,

x.x.x.x - - [05/Feb/2005:13:08:07 -0500] - "-" "CONNECT my.machine.org:873
HTTP/1.0" 200 16216

So the RSYNC_PROXY env variable is being read correctly, directing the
request to port 80, but the connection is not being handed off to the
rsyncd.

Any insight into how httpd should be configured or how the actual rsync
command should be issued would be greatly appreciated!

Todd