nginx Archives - Page 2 of 2 - Networking HowTos

Rewrite a http request to https with nginx

July 12, 2012 Linux

If you have a web server running nginx that accepts both http and https connections, there may be times where you want to prevent anyone from accessing a specific page/url using a insecure http connection. For example, login or registration pages. You always want these to be secure if you can.
Add the following into the main “location /” block, located in the http “server” section in your nginx configuration file for your site.

if ($request_uri ~* "/login.php") {
    rewrite ^ https://$host$request_uri permanent;
}

Note: This assumes your HTTP and HTTPS “server” sections/site details seperated in the nginx site configuration file, otherwise it would end up in a loop.
eg:

#HTTP Site Details
server {
    listen 80;
    <...config details removed...>
    location / {
        <...config details removed...>
        if ($request_uri ~* "/login.php") {
            rewrite ^ https://$host$request_uri permanent;
        }
    }
}
#HTTPS Site details
server {
    listen 443;
    ssl on;
    <...config details removed...>
    location / {
        <...config details removed...>
    }
}

It also assumes your HTTPS connection is using the default https port (port 443). You can change the url to go to a different port using “https://$host:port$request_uri permanent;” and replace port with the port number you are using for https connections.
Restart nginx, and test.
When you go to http://your.web.site/login.php in your web browser, it should now redirect you to https://your.web.server/login.php automatically.

Remove nginx version from HTTP response headers

July 11, 2012 Linux

Its usually a good idea to prevent users from being able to determine the version number of the web server software you are using. This helps prevent people from then going and looking for known vulnerabilities in that specific version, and attacking your site.
When a HTTP response comes back to the web browser, it also includes a number of headers. One of these headers is the “Server” header. This is used to identify the web server software being used.
eg:

curl -I http://yourwebserver

Sample output:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx/1.1.19

To remove the version number from this response when using nginx, edit the /etc/nginx/nginx.conf file and add the following line into the “http” section:

server_tokens off;

If it already exists but is set to “on”, change it to “off” instead of adding the new line.
Restart nginx.
Now when you run the ‘curl’ command as per the example above, and you should get an output like this:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx

Note: Make sure you keep up to date on software updates.

Set the X-Forwarded-For header on a nginx reverse proxy setup

April 15, 2012 Other

When using Nginx as a reverse proxy you may want to pass through the IP address of the remote user to your backend web server. This must be done using the X-Forwarded-For header. You have a couple of options on how to set this information with Nginx. You can either append the remote hosts IP address to any existing X-Forwarded-For values, or you can simply set the X-Forwarded-For value, which clears out any previous IP’s that would have been on the request.
Edit the nginx configuration file, and add one of the follow lines in where appropriate.
To set the X-Forwarded-For to only contain the remote users IP:

proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr;

To append the remote users IP to any existing X-Forwarded-For value:

proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;

Enable GZIP compression in Nginx

April 8, 2012 Other

All commonly used web browsers nowadays support GZIP compression, so enabling this on your web server is a great way to decrease how much data you are sending out, and in turn, speed up your site. While it may not make a huge difference on a small site, you may notice a big difference on a busy site.
With Nginx, enabling GZIP compression is a simple process that involves adding a few commands to your main ‘nginx.conf’ configuration file.
Open the Nginx configration file in your favorite text editor.
Locate the ‘http’ section.
The start of this section can be identified by the line starting with “http {” and the end of this section is identified by the next line that contains a single “}” character.
Anywhere within this ‘http’ section, add the following lines, if they don’t already exist. If they already exist, modify them to suit.

    gzip  on;
    gzip_comp_level 2;
    gzip_proxied any;
    gzip_types      text/plain text/html text/css application/x-javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript;

Change the ‘gzip_types’ line to contain any other mime types that you would like to send using gzip compression.
Save the file, and exit the editor.
Restart the Nginx server.
Your Nginx web server should now be serving out the files matching the mime types listed in the config using gzip compression.

Installing NGINX, PHP, and MySQL on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS using php-cgi

April 5, 2012 Linux, Ubuntu

Nginx (pronounced Engine-X) is a fast & lightweight HTTP and HTTPS web server (it can also act as a reverse proxy, and perform load balancing).
(Note: this is a updated version of a similar how to located here, but this article is using php-cgi package instead of php-fpm, and using only default Ubuntu repository’s).
Its small memory footprint requirements make it great for systems with small amounts of memory, such as low end cloud servers. Nginx is great for serving static files to users, and is cable of handling more than 10,000 simultaneous connections, but it lacks the embedded module support for PHP as Apache does.
Thankfully you can use the php5-cgi package to add PHP support to Nginx, and end up with a PHP enabled web server running on a low footprint setup. Nginx essentially offloads processing of .php files to the PHP fast cgi package, which in turn passes the interpreted script information back to Nginx, to return back to the end user.
The how to article below describes installing the usual components for the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP), however the Apache part is exchanged for Nginx.
Make sure the apt sources are up to date before installing:

$ sudo apt-get update

MySQL Configuration
Install MySQL:

$ sudo apt-get install -y mysql-server mysql-client

You will be asked to enter a “root” password for the MySQL server. Generate a strong password, type it in, and keep note of it for future reference.
PHP Configuration
To use PHP with Nginx, you require the PHP5-CGI package. Install PHP with php5-cgi and any other modules that you may require:

$ sudo apt-get install -y php5-cgi php5-mysql php5-curl php5-gd php5-idn php-pear php5-imagick \
php5-imap php5-mcrypt php5-memcache php5-mhash php5-ming php5-ps php5-pspell php5-recode \
php5-snmp php5-sqlite php5-tidy php5-xmlrpc php5-xsl php5-json

Note: You can modify the above command to add/remove individual PHP packages if needed. The php5-cgi package is however required when used with Nginx.
Download and set up the php-fastcgi init script for Ubuntu, using the following commands:

$ cd /etc/init.d
$ sudo wget -O php-fastcgi http://www.networkinghowtos.com/wp-content/uploads/scripts/php-fastcgi
$ sudo chmod +x php-fastcgi
$ sudo update-rc.d -f php-fastcgi defaults

The source for this file and more details can be found on the following page:
http://www.networkinghowtos.com/howto/ubuntu-php-fastcgi-init-script/
Start (or Restart) PHP Fast CGI:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/php-fastcgi restart

NGiNX Configuration
Install Nginx:

$ sudo apt-get install -y nginx

Edit the Nginx configuration file so that it knows what to do with .PHP files:

$ sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

There will be a section with the heading starting with “pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server” as seen below:

        # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
        #
        #location ~ \.php$ {
                #fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
                #fastcgi_index  index.php;
                #fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  /scripts$fastcgi_script_name;
                #includefastcgi_params;
        #}

Uncomment the lines as shown below, and modify the “fastcgi_param” line to reflect your website folder path. In my example I am using /var/www.
Also take note of the space added to the “include” line. For some reason the example code in the config file was missing the space. Add this space (or tab) as per the below example.

        # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
        #
        location ~ \.php$ {
                fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
                fastcgi_index  index.php;
                fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  /var/www$fastcgi_script_name;
                include fastcgi_params;
        }

Save and exit the editor.
Please note that there could be potential security issues with this generic base configuration (particularly if you are running a publicly accessible website, and allow file uploads). If you would like further information on this, please read the blog post at https://nealpoole.com/blog/2011/04/setting-up-php-fastcgi-and-nginx-dont-trust-the-tutorials-check-your-configuration/ and also read through the Nginx documentation.
Start Nginx:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/nginx start

Conclusion and Testing
Create a .php file containing the following PHP code and save it in your website folder and call it test.php (/var/www/test.php in my example.):

<?php
   phpinfo();
?>

Load up your site in a browser, and add the file /test.php to the url, and make sure it comes up with the usual PHP information page, and not just the source code for the .php file you created.
You should now have a working Nginx, PHP, and MySQL stack. Read the Nginx documentation for more detailed configuration options.
The Nginx documentation can be found on the Nginx website at http://nginx.org/

Installing NGINX, PHP, and MySQL on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

January 22, 2012 Linux, Ubuntu

Nginx (pronounced Engine-X) is a fast & lightweight HTTP and HTTPS web server (it can also act as a reverse proxy, and perform load balancing).
Its small memory footprint requirements make it great for systems with small amounts of memory, such as low end cloud servers. Nginx is great for serving static files to users, and is cable of handling more than 10,000 simultaneous connections, but it lacks the embedded module support for PHP as Apache does.
Thankfully you can use the PHP FPM FastCGI package to add PHP support to Nginx, and end up with a PHP enabled web server running on a low footprint setup. Nginx essentially offloads processing of .php files to the PHP FPM Fast CGI package, which in turn passes the interpreted script information back to Nginx, to return back to the end user.

Note: If you encounter issues with adding the 3rd party repository’s for php-fpm in this article, please see the revised article here:
Installing NGINX, PHP, and MySQL on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS using php-cgi.
This revised article linked above uses the php5-cgi module from the standard Ubuntu repositories, instead of php5-fpm from 3rd party repositories.

The how to article below describes installing the usual components for the LAMP stack (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP), however the Apache part is exchanged for Nginx.
Make sure the apt sources are up to date before installing:

$ sudo apt-get update

Install MySQL:

$ sudo apt-get install -y mysql-server mysql-client

You will be asked to enter a “root” password for the MySQL server. Generate a strong password, type it in, and keep note of it for future reference.
Run through the “mysql_secure_installation” script to lock down the MySQL installation.

$ mysql_secure_installation

You will generally want to answer the prompts with “y”, apart from the first, asking if you want to change the root MySQL password. Assuming you set a strong password in the previous step, you can select “n” for this question.
Install Nginx:

$ sudo apt-get install -y nginx

To use PHP with Nginx, you require the PHP Fast CGI package. To install the PHP Fast CGI package on Ubuntu 10.04, you first need to add an additional repository:

$ sudo apt-get install -y python-software-properties
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nginx/php5
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:brianmercer/php
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:brianmercer/php5
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:l-mierzwa/lucid-php5

Note: If you get errors here, check the comments for other repository’s you can use instead.
Update the apt package sources again to ensure the newly added repository has been updated.

$ sudo apt-get update

Install PHP and any other modules that you may require:

$ sudo apt-get install -y php5-fpm php5-mysql php5-curl php5-gd php5-idn php-pear php5-imagick \
php5-imap php5-mcrypt php5-memcache php5-mhash php5-ming php5-ps php5-pspell php5-recode \
php5-snmp php5-sqlite php5-tidy php5-xmlrpc php5-xsl php5-json

Note: You can modify the above command to add/remove individual PHP packages if needed. The php5-fpm package is however required when used with Nginx.
Edit the Nginx configuration file so that it knows what to do with .PHP files:

$ sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

There will be a section with the heading starting with “pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server” as seen below:

        # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
        #
        #location ~ \.php$ {
                #fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
                #fastcgi_index  index.php;
                #fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  /scripts$fastcgi_script_name;
                #includefastcgi_params;
        #}

        # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
        #
        location ~ \.php$ {
                fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
                fastcgi_index  index.php;
                fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  /var/www$fastcgi_script_name;
                include fastcgi_params;
        }

$ sudo /etc/init.d/php5-fpm restart

Note: php5-fpm should start automatically after being installed, but we will ensure that it is running by issuing the restart command.
Start Nginx:

$ sudo /etc/init.d/nginx start

Create a .php file containing the following PHP code and save it in your website folder and call it test.php (/var/www/test.php in my example.):

<?PHP
   phpinfo();
?>

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