Nginx Proxy Manager – lock administration on IP or password

Nginx Proxy Manager is a great tool for managing proxy vhosts. Specially useful when dealing with Docker containers. By default, you can access administration from everywhere through default port 81. Here is how you can simply lock it with password or limit it so that is accessible from specified IPs.

First login into admin panel and create Access List which will contain access rules:

You can limit to be accessible from IPS:

or with password:

Then, create a new Proxy Host that will have backend set to nginx proxy manager administration. In my case, “proxy-manager” is the host of my nginx proxy manager container. Don’t forget to set Access List to the one that we created in the previous step.

Then change value  in your docker-compose file so that port 81 will be on localhost only:

version: '4.3'
services:
proxy-manager:
image: 'jc21/nginx-proxy-manager:latest'
container_name: proxy-manager
restart: always
ports:
- "80:80" # Public HTTP Port
- "443:443" # Public HTTPS Port
- "127.0.0.1:81:81" # Admin Web Port

Administration is now reachable through subdomain https://admin.domain.com/ and only from IPs that we set in above step – or with password. It is advisable that you make some random URL like https://siudhfoisdiishjw0ion094ioejvn.domain.com when creating administration access.

Directadmin – build GeoIP2 in Directadmin’s NGINX and create country blocking for vhosts.

GeoIP is super helpful if you have troubles with a lot of nasty requests from some nasty countries :). Or, sometimes, you just want to lock some website or part of it ( administration ), so that it is accessible only from your country.

Things are a little different when you are using Directadmin control panel. I had this Directadmin with NGINX reverse proxy, so all NGINX is first point for requests made on your websites. Besides SSL offloading, you can also do filtering, country blocking … before request ends on backend ( Apache ).

So, here is how you can build GeoIP2 extension into your NGINX on Directadmin. I my case, I have Nginx as reverse proxy with Apache.

Check which NGINX version is installed on your server

[root@da nginx]# nginx -v
nginx version: nginx/1.23.1

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[SCRIPT] Install mod_security with OWASP ruleset and GeoIP2 NGINX modules with script.

Because I don’t own NGINX plus, I must build mod_security and geoip2 modules manually each time I set up a new server with NGINX. It’s good practice to have both installed, as it can increase security of your web application significantly. I was getting tired of building every time, so I created a script which will do that for you. This script is build for Rocky Linux 8, so it should work on CentOS 8 (Stream), AlmaLInux …

This script will auto-detect your NGINX version and will download source, build extensions and install ModSecurity also. It will also install necessary dependencies which are needed for install.  If you encounter errors, please check for errors on which library you need. It will also install OWASP ruleset for mod_security and configure your NGINX accordingly. Path to extensions will be inserted in your NGINX configuration by script.

You should install and configure geoipupdate and add geoip definitions in your nginx configuration.

I hope this helps you and saves you some time. Feel free to modify and customize the script according to your needs.

Here is the script: build nginx modules script

Build NGINX with GeoIP2 support from source

I used GeoIP library with Nginx for quite some time, but it came to EOL. GeoIP2 is now avalible. It is great tool for blocking unwanted traffic from your webserver. This was done on Centos 7. If you don’t want to pay for getpagespeed’s payed version, than you must build this module from source.

First, you’ll need to know your curent NGINX version


[root@myserver ~]# nginx -v
nginx version: nginx/1.16.1

Then, download exact same version of NGINX from this site and unpack it. In my case:


[root@myserver ~]# wget http://nginx.org/download/nginx-1.16.1.tar.gz
[root@myserver ~]# tar -xvzf nginx-1.16.1.tar.gz
[root@myserver ~]# cd nginx-1.16.1.tar.gz

Then you should download ngx_http_geoip2_module – geoip2 module for NGINX:


[root@myserver ~]# wget https://github.com/leev/ngx_http_geoip2_module/archive/master.zip
[root@myserver ~]# unzip master.zip

You should install GCC and Development Tools for dependencies.

[root@myserver ~]# yum groupinstall ‘Development Tools’
[root@myserver ~]# yum install gcc

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Password protect Netdata with NGINX / Permission denied while connecting to upstream error

Netdata is great free tool for generating server statistics. By default it’s open for entire world on port 19999 – http://servername.com:19999. It is not a good idea to leave this open so everyone can your system statistics.

One way to limit access from where it is accessible is by editing netdata.conf and specify IPS in “allow connections from” variable.

[web]
allow connections from = ip's that are allowed to access>

There is no option to password protect it. This can be done with NGINX. You can create reverse proxy, so that nginx will serve content from netdata application. To make netdata accessible on subfolder of your hostname, eg. http://my.hostname.com/netdata, then create nginx configuration like bellow.

First generate password file for nginx:

htpasswd -c /etc/nginx/.htpasswd "username"

Then create or edit existing nginx configuration to something like this:

upstream netdata {
        server 127.0.0.1:19999;
        keepalive 64;
}

server {
     listen 443 ssl http2;
     server_name my.hostname.com;
     location = /netdata {
         return 301 /netdata/;
    }

    location ~ /netdata/(?.*) {

        auth_basic "Restricted Content";
        auth_basic_user_file /etc/nginx/.htpasswd;

        proxy_redirect off;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;   

        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Server $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_pass_request_headers on;
        proxy_set_header Connection "keep-alive";
        proxy_store off;
        proxy_pass http://netdata/$ndpath$is_args$args;

        gzip on;
        gzip_proxied any;
        gzip_types *;
   }

    error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;
    access_log off;
    ....

Also, don’t forget to edit netdata.conf and change some variables. Make netdata accessible only from localhost (nginx):

[web]
bind to = 127.0.0.1
allow connections from = localhost
allow dashboard from = localhost

You should also allow connection to port 19999 only to local traffic (localhost).

Restart nginx and netdata, then try to access like: http(s)://my.hostname.com/netdata.

If you’re getting error like bellow in your nginx error log, than chances are that SELinux is active. Disable selinux or execute this command “setsebool -P httpd_can_network_connect true”.

[crit] 8411#0: *1 connect() to 127.0.0.1:19999 failed (13: Permission denied) while connecting to upstream, client: 8.8.8.8, server: my.hostname.com, request: "GET /netdata/ HTTP/1.1", upstream: "http://127.0.0.1:19999/", host: "my.hostname.com"

 

 

 

NGINX: rewrite non-www to www for multi domain virtual hosts

If you have NGINX virtual host that has a multi different domains pointing to same document root (multi server_name), and you want to automatically redirect non-www to www, than bellow is simple solution. I also wanted to redirect to https with www.

If you don’t need https redirection, than you can simply use variable $scheme instead of “https:”. 

if ( $host !~ ^www\. ) {
            return 302 https://www.$host$request_uri;
}

So virtual host should look something like this:

server {
      listen 1.1.1.1:80;
      server_name domain1.com www.domain1.com domain2.com www.domain2.com;

      if ( $host !~ ^www\. ) {
           return 302 https://www.$host$request_uri;
      }
      return 302 https://$host$request_uri;
}

You should also make this redirect in your https server definition. otherwise request for https://domain1.com won’t redirect to www.

server {
      listen 1.1.1.1:443;
      server_name domain1.com www.domain1.com domain2.com www.domain2.com;
      if ( $host !~ ^www\. ) {
              return 302 https://www.$host$request_uri;
      }

      ssl on;
      ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/domains.com/fullchain.pem;
      ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/domains.com/privkey.pem;

      .... //other nginx configuration ....
}

Multidomain webroot for Letsencrypt with NGINX

If you have web server on which there is a lot of virtual hosts, you may want to have one webroot directory for Letsencrypt SSL certificates only. So when Letsencrypt will make the requests for SSL registration or renewal, it will look in this directory. In this case I did this on CentOS 7 with NGINX web server.

First, let’s create directory what will be used for letsencrypt purposes. It must be writable by your web server user. You can define different path.

[root@machine ~]# mkdir -p /var/www/le-certs
[root@machine ~]# chown -R wwwuser:wwwgroup /var/www/le-certs

Letsencrypt will need access in “.well-known/acme-challenge”. For NGINX add something like this in your server block for desired virtual host.

location ~ /.well-known/acme-challenge/ {
             root /var/www/le-certs/;
             break;
}

You can also create new file named, for example le-config.conf and add block above in to it. Then you can simply include this line in your virtual hosts. 

server {
             listen :443 ssl http2;
             server_name mywebsite.com www.mywebsite.com;
             root /var/www/mywebsite/;

             include le-config.conf;
              ...
}

 

 

WordPress returning 404 Error on all subpages

In this case I used NGINX as reverse proxy for ssl offloading in front of Apache. On this WordPress installation I was getting 404 on all subpages. Htaccess syntax was correct as it was nginx configuration. In this case, problem was caused because of missing “AllowOverride” Apache directive which didn’t allow htaccess to be processed. I added “AllowOverride ALL” in apache configuration for this virtual host. Subpages started to work.

Example:

<VirtualHost *:8080>
DocumentRoot /var/www/mysite.com/
ServerName mysite.com
ServerAlias www.mysite.com

<Directory "/var/www/mysite.com/">
AllowOverride All
</Directory>
</VirtualHost>

WordPress: Too Many Redirects Issue when NGINX reverse proxy to Apache

I installed NGINX and put it in front of Apache for SSL offloading and caching static content. Traffic is proxied from Nginx to Apache.  When I tried to open site via https, it returned this painful error “Too Many Redirects”.

Try to add this in your wp-config.php – if you have everything else configured correctly, it should work:

$_SERVER['HTTPS'] = 'On';

[kofi]

Limit xmlrpc.php to only specific web clients

Xmlrpc.php is very common target of attacks. In most cases you don’t need xmlrpc, but if you use third-party apps like WordPress for iPhone or android or other editors, then xmlrpc is the one who communicates between them and your WordPress installation. If you’ll be using it, it can be good idea to limit access to it only from “browsers” that you are using to access it. In case bellow, I’m using iPhone WordPress app.

When access to xmlrpc.php via iphone app, you’ll see that access log looks like this:

[11/Jun/2017:19:45:08 +0200] "POST /xmlrpc.php HTTP/2.0" 200 462 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 10_3_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/603.2.4 (KHTML, like Gecko) Mobile/14F89 wp-iphone/7.7"

From this you can see that wp-iphone/7.7 is named as client. So this will be our key for nginx configuration. We’ll make rule that will only accept requests to xmlrpc.php from clients containing string “wp-iphone”. Other clients will be denied. This is not bulletproof of as web client can be easily spoofed, but it should block majority of attacks.

location = /xmlrpc.php {
if ($http_user_agent !~* "wp-iphone")
{
return 403;
}
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:<your_php_fpm_port>;
}

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