Firefox "Unable to connect" without www? - firefox

I wasn't sure whether to put this in Serverfault or on Stackoverflow; it doesn't seem to be a server issue so I though here would be best.
I am currently working on a university website, and for some reason Firefox refuses to load the site unless you use www (ex www.university.edu). Every other browser accepts university.edu and simply redirects to www.university.edu as nginx is setup to do. My nginx config:
server {
listen 80;
server_name university.edu www;
rewritei ^http://www.university.edu$request_uri? permanent;
}
server {
listen 80;
server_name www.university.edu static.university.edu m.university.edu www.university.com;
.
.
.
}
So what should happen is when a request comes in and is www.university.edu, the second block catches it and everything runs normally, but if a request comes in and is university.edu the first block catches it and redirects it to the second block. But for some reason Firefox is not doing this.
Any idea's what could be causing this issue?
Update 1:
rewritei is not mispelled. The university's nginx was changed before it was compiled to enable regex case insensitivity, and was placed under the function "rewritei". Also after playing around with the site I found figured out that if you visit the site at www.university.edu first, then try university.edu it will load, but if you clear the cache and try to visit university.edu it will not load until you visit www.university.edu.

You have a typo; "rewrite" and try removing the www.
server {
listen 80;
server_name university.edu;
return 301 http://www.university.edu$request_uri;
}
Also take a look at the pitfalls on rewrite - http://wiki.nginx.org/Pitfalls#Taxing_Rewrites

Related

Extending Nginx config on Beanstalk doesn't rewrite urls properly

I have an existing Laravel API application running on Beanstalk. It's been lagging in updates on EBS, so currently I'm in the process of upgrading the platforms and CI/CD for this app. There one remaining problem I'm running into, which leaves me scratching my head at the 'but it should work'-level.
What I want
All URLs containing https://example.com/index.php/endpoint to be redirected to https://example.com/endpoint and show the same content as https://example.com/index.php/endpoint would (incl. subsequent the URL's slugs)
How I'm trying to do this
Due to this wonderful answer by cnst, I have the configuration below that seems to work for many (incl. some other online sources).
server{
index index.php;
if ($request_uri ~* "^(.*/)index\.php/*(.*)$") {
return 301 $1$2;
}
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
# Remove from everywhere index.php
if ($request_uri ~* "^(.*/)index\.php(/?)(.*)") {
return 301 $1$3;
}
}
if (!-d $request_filename) {
rewrite ^/(.+)/$ /$1 permanent;
}
if ($request_uri ~* "\/\/") {
rewrite ^/(.*) /$1 permanent;
}
}
I'm putting this configuration in a file located at my_project/.platform/nginx/conf.d/proxy.conf, which according to AWS' documentation, should upload with the project and extend the nginx configuration. As far as I can tell, it does pick it up, since any typo will result in an error after eb deploy. I can also see on the server it has been added to /etc/nginx/conf.d/proxy.conf.
The Problem
Even though the extending proxy.conf is being deployed and the configuration in it seems to be picked up, the application won't pick up the rewrite and leave the application URLs running with the index.php instead of the rewrite.
https://example.com/index.php/endpoint → works
https://example.com/endpoint → results in a server generated 404
Nginx logs show 2021/02/12 14:23:24 [error] 7523#0: *35 open() "/var/www/html/public/api" failed (2: No such file or directory) which tells me it has searched for a file and never tried running it through index.php.
The Questions
What am I missing in my configuration?
Or is it something about EBS that I overlooked or misunderstood?
Is the index.php angry since I'm trying to hide its face from public view?
Solution moved from the question to an answer:
I gave it a weekend to see if anyone would know and went back to work.
First thing, I did is see if Beanstalk was picking up any
configuration, so I put an invalid variable in and see if that would
break the server. It didn't...
Second, I checked if my Beanstalk instance was actually using Nginx
(default) or got switch to Apache (httpd) for some reason (it includes
both). Via its GUI config I could easily tell it's Nginx.
Third, I viewed the nginx.conf on the server and checked how other
.conf files were being included. Part of it is seen here;
http {
[...]
include conf.d/*.conf;
map $http_upgrade $connection_upgrade {
[...]
}
server {
listen 80 default_server;
access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log main;
[...]
# Include the Elastic Beanstalk generated locations
include conf.d/elasticbeanstalk/*.conf;
}
}
Here lays the problem; I was including a file at the conf.d/*.conf
level with a second nginx server configuration block, which is
effectively overwritten with the standard server configuration block
by Beanstalks own config.
So there's two solutions here;
override the entire nginx.conf by including a new .platform/nginx/nginx.conf in your project, where you extend the
server block with your own config
or, in my opinion more gracefully, add .platform/nginx/elasticbeanstalk/proxy.conf to your project,
extending the server block specifically (but remove any server
blocks from your own config)
Solution 2 will gard that AWS can always update its default nginx.conf
without you having to watch out for it (unless they change the
location of the elasticbeanstalk configs).
I did try putting my configuration in
.platform/nginx/elasticbeanstalk/proxy.conf before, but that would
break the server, since I was including a server block, causing it
to double nest.
Lesson here;
add .platform/nginx/nginx.conf to override your entire Beanstalk Nginx configuration
add .platform/nginx/conf.d/your_conf.conf for any extensions to the http block
add .platform/nginx/conf.d/elasticbeanstalk/your_conf.conf for any extensions to the server block (or nesting within)

Passenger Standalone - Force Redirect to SSL

I've started to use Elastic Beanstalk with Ruby + Passenger Standalone which seems awesome, however I want to redirect all HTTP to HTTPS, I haven't managed to find any resource at all about this. I've been looking at customizing the nginx.conf.erb but can't really find out what to do.
Note that I already have SSL working, I just need to make all requests redirecting to SSL.
Thanks,
Johan
server {
listen 80;
server_name my.domain.com;
return 301 https://$server_name$request_uri;
}
server {
listen 443 ssl;
server_name my.domain.com;
[....]
}
It seems to late to answer this question. Just for those who need to tackle this in the future:
Try adding "port": 80 in your Passengerfile.json, and uncommenting "config.force_ssl = true" in your config/environments/production.rb.
The first change will direct your browser's request (without specifying port or protocol, i.e. something like www.example.com) to passenger. The second line tells passenger to redirect any http request to https.

Pass data from Nginx to Sinatra app

So we do have our Jekyll app that serves a static webpage, which includes a contact form.
This contact form request then gets passed (POST) to our Sinatra-app at http://sub.example.com/send_email to deliver an email to inform us about the new contact..
So far so good, everything works fine if we run the Sinatra-app by using
bundle exec rackup config.ru
However, upon starting nginx and passenger_ruby, our Sinatra app does not receive any data whatsoever.
We have set up the server like this:
server {
listen 80;
server_name sub.example.com;
error_log /home/example/error.log warn;
access_log /home/example/access.log;
passenger_enabled on;
passenger_ruby /home/example/.rbenv/shims/ruby;
root /home/example/evil_contact/public;
}
Now when accessing http://sub.example.com the access.log and error.log file do not have any entry. It is as if the request wouldn't arrive over at nginx or does not get passed through.
Let me know if there is something else needed.
Maybe we are just missing something obvious here.
Thank you in advance.
Alrighty,
After dozen of coffees the solution was not to change the nginx settings, but check the DNS records.
Afterall, the DNS entry had still a wrong IP assigned, so the request was going somewhere else.

Nginx https redirects - stop further rules processing

I'm trying to configure http and https redirects from an old site to a new one.
According to the rewrite directive docs:
If the replacement string begins with http:// then the client will
be redirected, and any further rewrite directives are terminated.
And I'm trying to achieve the same with https to no avail.
This is my server config:
listen 80;
listen 443 ssl;
server_name mydomain.com
rewrite ^/path/resource(.*)$ $scheme://newdomain.com/newpath/resource$1 permanent;
...
return 301 http://newdomain.com/newpath/;
Using http I get what I'm looking for: if I access mydomain.com/path/resource I'm redirected to newdomain.com/newpath/resource.
However, the same with https redirects me to http://newdomain.com/newpath/.
I have rewrite_log on and in both cases the rewrite rule is matched but the https protocol does not stop further rules processing.
I have the feeling that either I'm missing something really obvious or I'm not approaching this problem properly. I wouldn't mind doing this in any different way at all if it works.
Have any of you out there any idea on how to achieve the http redirect with https too?
I usually like to use return instead of rewrite for redirects, try matching the path with a location block
location ~ /path/resource(.*) {
return 301 $scheme://newdomain.com/newpath/resource$1;
}
I think this way you know for sure there will be no further processing, because it's only 1 line, try it and tell me how it goes.
PS: This will maintain the $scheme of the request, requests to http:// will be redirected to a http:// and https:// will be redirected to https://

nginx proxy_pass to Jboss+Spring/Websphere+Portal projects

I have an nginx up at the front serving as a proxy to two servers, one running Websphere Portal Server and one running Spring on a Jboss server.
I'm currently having problems with the proxying of certain requests, for instance, I have the following:
server{
listen:8080;
server_name:localhost;
location /jbossSpring/ {
proxy_pass http://177.21.1.15:9000/Spring_project/;
}
location /webspherePortal/ {
proxy_pass http://177.21.1.15:9400/Portal_project/;
}
}
Now, this does the proxy from localhost:8080/jbossSpring/ and localhost:8080/webpsherePortal/ correctly, however, the pages I get keep requesting files that are located on localhost:8080/Spring_project/ and localhost:8080/Portal_project/.
Is there anyway for me to handle these in nginx? or do I have to modify the Spring/Portal projects to get the right url? (path dependencies probably?)
You may achieve this result by using http rewrite module, documented at ngx_http_rewrite_module
To give an idea, I guess your rewrites shall look like below (I haven't validated this)
server {
...
rewrite ^/Spring_project/(.*) /jbossSpring/$1 last;
rewrite ^/Portal_project/(.*) /webspherePortal/$1 last;
...
}

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