Nginx Proxy for a GitHub Page? - proxy

Question

We have a blog that we host on github with Jekyll; it is there : http://blog.superfeedr.com
Ideally, I want it to be at http://superfeedr.com/blog/ because we need to add some AJAX and we need to avoid the "Same Origin Policy" problems.
We use Nginx on our "main" webserver, and I have the following setup :
location /blog/ {
proxy_pass http://blog.superfeedr.com/;
proxy_redirect off;
proxy_max_temp_file_size 0;
client_max_body_size 10m;
client_body_buffer_size 128k;
proxy_connect_timeout 90;
proxy_send_timeout 90;
proxy_read_timeout 90;
proxy_buffer_size 4k;
proxy_buffers 4 32k;
proxy_busy_buffers_size 64k;
proxy_temp_file_write_size 64k;
}
Unfortunately, as you can see if you go to http://superfeedr.com/blog/ this obviously doesn't work. Oddly enough, we're redirected to Github's homepage.
PS: obviously, we could host the blog on our main server, but the goal is to host it on a different host so that we can almost guarantee it to be online if the site is down...

Answer 1

First, nginx does not send Host header to the blog.superfeedr.com. This makes it send all the required headers:
proxy_set_header Host blog.superfeedr.com;
proxy_set_header X-Host blog.superfeedr.com;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
Second, some url rewriting required. By some weird reason this depends on the version of nginx you are using. Anyway,
for 0.6.x (0.6.32 for me) this should work:
location /blog {
rewrite ^/blog(.*)$ /$1 last;
error_page 402 = #blog;
return 402;
}
location #blog {
proxy_pass http://blog.superfeedr.com;
# the rest of proxying parameters should be here
proxy_set_header Host blog.superfeedr.com;
proxy_set_header X-Host blog.superfeedr.com;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
}
You also need to cover all the paths the blog refers to (css, images etc), e.g.
location /css {
error_page 402 = #blog;
return 402;
}
For 0.7.59:
location /blog {
set $blog 1;
rewrite ^/blog(.*)$ /$1 last;
}
location /css {
set $blog 1;
error_page 402 = #blog;
return 402;
}
location / {
if ($blog) {
error_page 402 = #blog;
return 402;
}
# here is where default settings for / should be
root /usr/local/www/nginx/;
}
location #blog {
proxy_pass http://blog.superfeedr.com;
# the rest of proxying parameters should be here
proxy_set_header Host blog.superfeedr.com;
proxy_set_header X-Host blog.superfeedr.com;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
}

Answer 2

Another way to do this (but without involving nginx) could be with a DNS directive. I think most DNS services offer URL forward service.
For example, in hover.com, first add blog with A directive to 64.99.80.30 under DNS tab, and then in the Forward tab, add blog forward to http://superfeedr.com/blog/
In dnsimple.com, it's simpler, just add blog URL record to forward to http://superfeedr.com/blog/
These forwards, I believe, also work for https:// type URLs.