Installing Nginx Server as Reverse-Proxy for Apache [Multiple Websites]

Nginx or engine X is a free and open-source web server, reverse proxying, load balancer, caching, and more. Apache isn’t the only web server for hosting web content (although, it is the most used), Nginx is also very powerful and stable.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to configure Nginx as a reverse proxy for apache on multiple websites…

Let’s get to installing Nginx (make sure apache is already installed):

sudo apt update

sudo apt install nginx

Verify Nginx is running:

systemctl status nginx

* nginx.service - A high performance web server and a reverse proxy server
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service; enabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Mon 2020-06-29 19:18:04 UTC; 1 day 4h ago
  ……………

You’ll see active (running), and also enabled in the vendor preset option, meaning when you restart your server, Nginx gonna boot up automatically.

If you see inactive (dead), use the following command:

sudo systemctl start nginx

If that does not work, reboot your server, and restart. Now, check the status if all is in place.

If you are hosting multiple domains, it is ideal to have a separate config for each domain, but since this is just for reverse proxy, I see no reason to create a separate config, If you have multiple domains, you can manage them in one config file, this way, you won’t have to go back and forth.

Nginx comes with a default server block (virtual host), let’s remove the symlink to avoid conflicts:

sudo unlink /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

This removes the symlink from the etc enabled folder, although it exists in the etc default folder, it is just no longer active.

Create a new default server block in sites-available:

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/allwebsites

Note: The below config is for multiple websites, so, if you want to create a config for one website, stop at the END First website line below:

## START First Website
server {
    server_name www.firstwebsite.com firstwebsite.com;
    root var/www/firstwebsite/;

    access_log off;

    # Static contents
    location ~* ^.+.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|css|zip|tgz|gz|rar|bz2|doc|xls|exe|pdf|ppt|txt|tar|mid|midi|wav|bmp|rtf$|js)$ {
        expires max;
    }

    # Dynamic content, forward to Apache
    location / {
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;
    }
}


## END First Website


## START Second Website
server {
    server_name www.secondwebsite.com secondwebsite.com;
    root var/www/secondwebsite/;

    access_log off;

    # Static contents
    location ~* ^.+.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|css|zip|tgz|gz|rar|bz2|doc|xls|exe|pdf|ppt|txt|tar|mid|midi|wav|bmp|rtf$|js)$ {
        expires max;
    } 
    # Dynamic content, forward to Apache
    location / {
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;
    }
}

## END Second Website

Let me briefly summarize the above config structure:

• server { } - Starting a block declarative, which is going to contain a set of simple declarative
• server_name - The name of the website
• root - The Document Root to the directory that will store the files for the website. You might want to change this to your site root directory
• access_log  off; - switch off access log for the website, you can use the global access log if needed
• # Static contents - the location would match and serve all the static content, and
• # Dynamic content, forward to Apache - this would forward the dynamic content to apache (e.g PHP) and pass the request header, e.g php

Create a symlink to enable it

ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/allwebsites /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/allwebsites

Open apache config:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/ports.conf

Change

Listen 80

To

Listen 8080

Reload Apache2 & Nginx

systemctl reload apache2 

systemctl reload nginx

Configure mod_remoteip

An issue you would come across when using Nginx as a front-end proxy is that apache won’t log the original requester’s IP address, it would only log the address of the localhost (127.0.0.1). This is common in WordPress when a user leaves a comment, it won’t show the user's original IP. (I had so many challenges figuring this out)

To fix this, we use a module called “mod_remoteip” which is easy as bean cake to install and configure, the good thing is that the module is already available out of the box in apache, so, all we have to do is enable it, use the following command:

sudo a2enmod remoteip

Once it is enabled, open the config file:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

Add the following at the bottom:

#Show Real REMOTE IP
RemoteIPHeader X-Forwarded-For

Don’t close the file yet, find this line:

LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %O \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" combined

replace the ‘h’ with ‘a’ as shown below

LogFormat "%a %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %O \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" combined

Restart Apache:

sudo systemctl reload apache2 

You are good to go!