Using an alternate base dir

Traditionally, Bitwarden is limited to residing at the root of a subdomain, e.g. https://bitwarden.example.com.

This limitation originates in the backend and web vault, which haven't been designed to accommodate alternate base dirs (see bitwarden/server#277). The mobile/desktop apps and browser extensions actually have no issues using a base URL with a path.

In bitwarden_rs, with the changes in PR#868, you can configure the backend server to work properly with an alternate base dir. With a bit more work, it's also possible to modify the web vault to work properly, resulting in a fully functional installation.

Configuring the backend server

Simply configure your domain URL to include the base dir. For example, suppose you want to access your installation at https://bitwarden.example.com/secret-path.

1. Stop bitwarden_rs.
2. If you normally configure bitwarden_rs using the admin page, edit your config.json to look as follows:

   {
     "domain": "https://bitwarden.example.com/secret-path",
     // ... other values ...
   }

3. If you normally configure bitwarden_rs via environment variables, update your config files/scripts to set the DOMAIN environment variable to the base URL. For example:

   docker run -e DOMAIN="https://bitwarden.example.com/secret-path" ...

4. Restart bitwarden_rs.
5. You should now be able to access the web vault at https://bitwarden.example.com/secret-path/ (note the trailing slash). For reasons not entirely clear, you may run into issues if you use https://bitwarden.example.com/secret-path (without the trailing slash).
6. Configure your apps or browser extensions to use https://bitwarden.example.com/secret-path. If you add a trailing slash, the apps and extensions will automatically remove it before saving.