Support http2 for webapp #68164

gaffneyd4 · 2025-10-17T16:49:11Z

gaffneyd4
Oct 17, 2025

Goal: Ability to connect to the airbyte webapp using the http2 protocol (h2c: unencrypted http2 over TCP)

We self-host airbyte using the helm chart on Kubernetes. We have tested exposing the airbyte webapp using the ingress-nginx ingress controller, and the envoy-gateway gateway api controller.

While connecting to the airbyte webapp directly from the browser over http://localhost (using kubectl port-forward) only http/1.1 is supported:

While connecting to the airbyte webapp through the proxy (envoy, nginx) only http/1.1 is supported.

The nginx/1.27.2 server bundled in the webapp container that proxies traffic for the webapp does not honor http/1.1 h2c upgrade requests:

# Trying to use http2 via http/1.1 upgrade mechanism on curl:
curl -v --http2 http://localhost:8080/
* Host localhost:8080 was resolved.
* IPv6: ::1
* IPv4: 127.0.0.1
*   Trying [::1]:8080...
* Connected to localhost (::1) port 8080
> GET / HTTP/1.1
> Host: localhost:8080
> User-Agent: curl/8.7.1
> Accept: */*
> Connection: Upgrade, HTTP2-Settings
> Upgrade: h2c
> HTTP2-Settings: AAMAAABkAAQAoAAAAAIAAAAA
>
* Request completely sent off

# airbyte webapp nginx server output from curl:
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
< Server: nginx/1.27.2
< Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2025 16:59:41 GMT
< Content-Type: text/html
< Content-Length: 24731
< Last-Modified: Tue, 13 May 2025 03:05:45 GMT
< Connection: keep-alive
< ETag: "6822b709-609b"
< Content-Security-Policy: script-src * 'unsafe-inline'; worker-src 'self' blob:;
< Accept-Ranges: bytes

If the server supports HTTP/2, it responds with a 101 Switching Protocols status code, including the Upgrade and Connection headers to confirm the protocol change. The server then sends the HTTP/2 connection preface, starting with a SETTINGS frame.

The nginx/1.27.2 server bundled in the webapp container that proxies traffic for the webapp rejects http2 requests (http2 prior knowledge):

# trying to use http2 directly on curl:
curl -v --http2-prior-knowledge http://localhost:8080/
* Host localhost:8080 was resolved.
* IPv6: ::1
* IPv4: 127.0.0.1
*   Trying [::1]:8080...
* Connected to localhost (::1) port 8080
* [HTTP/2] [1] OPENED stream for http://localhost:8080/
* [HTTP/2] [1] [:method: GET]
* [HTTP/2] [1] [:scheme: http]
* [HTTP/2] [1] [:authority: localhost:8080]
* [HTTP/2] [1] [:path: /]
* [HTTP/2] [1] [user-agent: curl/8.7.1]
* [HTTP/2] [1] [accept: */*]
> GET / HTTP/2
> Host: localhost:8080
> User-Agent: curl/8.7.1
> Accept: */*
>
* Request completely sent off
* Remote peer returned unexpected data while we expected SETTINGS frame.  Perhaps, peer does not support HTTP/2 properly.
* Closing connection
curl: (16) Remote peer returned unexpected data while we expected SETTINGS frame.  Perhaps, peer does not support HTTP/2 properly.

# airbyte webapp nginx server response:
HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request
Server: nginx/1.27.2
Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2025 16:15:55 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 157
Connection: close

<html>
<head><title>400 Bad Request</title></head>
<body>
<center><h1>400 Bad Request</h1></center>
<hr><center>nginx/1.27.2</center>
</body>
</html>

# airbyte webapp nginx server log:
127.0.0.1 - - [17/Oct/2025:16:40:49 +0000] "PRI * HTTP/2.0" 400 157 "-" "-" "-"

When inspecting the nginx configuration inside the airbyte webapp container (airbyte/webapp:1.6.2) I observe:

$ cat /etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf
...
server {
    listen       8080;
    listen  [::]:8080;
    server_name  localhost;

The nginx server is built with http2 support:

$ nginx -V
nginx version: nginx/1.27.2
built by gcc 13.2.1 20240309 (Alpine 13.2.1_git20240309)
built with OpenSSL 3.3.0 9 Apr 2024 (running with OpenSSL 3.3.2 3 Sep 2024)
TLS SNI support enabled
configure arguments: --prefix=/etc/nginx --sbin-path=/usr/sbin/nginx --modules-path=/usr/lib/nginx/modules --conf-path=/etc/nginx/nginx.conf --error-log-path=/var/log/nginx/error.log --http-log-path=/var/log/nginx/access.log --pid-path=/var/run/nginx.pid --lock-path=/var/run/nginx.lock --http-client-body-temp-path=/var/cache/nginx/client_temp --http-proxy-temp-path=/var/cache/nginx/proxy_temp --http-fastcgi-temp-path=/var/cache/nginx/fastcgi_temp --http-uwsgi-temp-path=/var/cache/nginx/uwsgi_temp --http-scgi-temp-path=/var/cache/nginx/scgi_temp --with-perl_modules_path=/usr/lib/perl5/vendor_perl --user=nginx --group=nginx --with-compat --with-file-aio --with-threads --with-http_addition_module --with-http_auth_request_module --with-http_dav_module --with-http_flv_module --with-http_gunzip_module --with-http_gzip_static_module --with-http_mp4_module --with-http_random_index_module --with-http_realip_module --with-http_secure_link_module --with-http_slice_module --with-http_ssl_module --with-http_stub_status_module --with-http_sub_module --with-http_v2_module --with-http_v3_module --with-mail --with-mail_ssl_module --with-stream --with-stream_realip_module --with-stream_ssl_module --with-stream_ssl_preread_module --with-cc-opt='-Os -fstack-clash-protection -Wformat -Werror=format-security -fno-plt -g' --with-ld-opt='-Wl,--as-needed,-O1,--sort-common -Wl,-z,pack-relative-relocs'

The server configuration is missing the http2 directive (https://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_v2_module.html) which would look like:

server {
    listen 80;              # cleartext
    http2  on;              # enable HTTP/2 (h2c for cleartext)

    server_name  example.com;

    ...
}

It looks like a shell script would need to be added to add the http2 directive in the base airbyte nginx docker image project: https://github.com/airbytehq/airbyte-platform/tree/main/airbyte-base-nginx-image/src

Here's an example shell script that implements ipv6 in the airbyte webapp nginx server: https://github.com/airbytehq/airbyte-platform/blob/9b90f653d63574f32cf5a21ba37164e787fc8366/airbyte-base-nginx-image/src/10-listen-on-ipv6-by-default.sh#L63

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Support http2 for webapp #68164

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Support http2 for webapp #68164

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gaffneyd4 Oct 17, 2025

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gaffneyd4
Oct 17, 2025