Deploying with Nginx

Example config

The following is an example of a working Nginx configuration file. Ngnix is used as a reverse proxy to redirect requests to a locally running process, also using SSL certificates. In the next section, you can see the modified Key Options.

/etc/nginx/nginx.conf

user nginx;
worker_processes auto;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;
pid /run/nginx.pid;

# Load dynamic modules. See /usr/share/doc/nginx/README.dynamic.
include /usr/share/nginx/modules/*.conf;

events {
    worker_connections 1024;
}

http {
    log_format  main  '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
                      '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
                      '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';

    access_log  /var/log/nginx/access.log  main;

    sendfile            on;
    tcp_nopush          on;
    tcp_nodelay         on;
    keepalive_timeout   65;
    types_hash_max_size 2048;

    include             /etc/nginx/mime.types;
    default_type        application/octet-stream;

    # Load modular configuration files from the /etc/nginx/conf.d directory.
    # See http://nginx.org/en/docs/ngx_core_module.html#include
    # for more information.
    include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;

    server {
        listen       443 ssl http2 default_server;
        listen       [::]:443 ssl http2 default_server;
        server_name   my-emhub.org;
        root         /usr/share/nginx/html;
        ssl on;
        ssl_certificate "/opt/ssl/certssl/myemhub.pem";
        ssl_certificate_key "/opt/ssl/certssl/myemhub.key";
        client_max_body_size 16M;

        # Load configuration files for the default server block.
        include /etc/nginx/default.d/*.conf;

        location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:5000;
            proxy_http_version 1.1;
            proxy_set_header Host $host;
            proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        }

        location /api/ {
            proxy_pass http://localhost:5000/api/;
            proxy_http_version 1.1;
            proxy_set_header Host $host;
            proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
            proxy_buffering off;
            proxy_read_timeout 1d;
        }

        error_page 404 /404.html;
            location = /40x.html {
        }

        error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
            location = /50x.html {
        }
    }

    server {
        if ($host = my-emhub.org) {
            return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
         } # managed by Certbot

        listen 80 ;
        listen [::]:80 ;
        server_name my-emhub.org;
        return 404; # managed by Certbot
    }

Key Options

Some of the recommended changes are mentioned below:

# Define the server name
server_name   my-emhub.org;

# Enable SSL
ssl on;

# Specify where your certificates are
ssl_certificate "/opt/ssl/certssl/myemhub.pem";
ssl_certificate_key "/opt/ssl/certssl/myemhub.key";

# Increase the size of allowed file uploads
# (Useful in EMhub when uploading images for Project's Entries)
client_max_body_size 16M;

Moreover, we define two locations for the reverse proxy:

# Default root location
location / {
proxy_pass http://localhost:5000;
    proxy_http_version 1.1;
    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
}

# Another location for the API, to disable buffering and increase
# the timeout, since this is required for long polling of some
# worker processes
location /api/ {
    proxy_pass http://localhost:5000/api/;
    proxy_http_version 1.1;
    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    proxy_buffering off;
    proxy_read_timeout 1d;
}