Questions[https](server)

I have several servers running on the same machine, some with http only, some with both http and https. There are several server blocks defined in separate files which are included from the main config file.

I have set up a "default" server for http which will serve a generic "maintenance page" to requests that don't match any of the other server_names in the other config files. The http default server works as expected, it uses the server_name "_" and it appears first in the list of includes (because I have observed that in the case of duplicate server_names across servers, the one appearing first is used). This works great.

I would expect the same exact server block (only switching "listen 80 default_server" to "listen 443 default_server" and also instead of serving page "return 444") however it does not. Instead, it appears that the new default https server is actually grabbing all incoming https connections and causing them to fail, although the other server blocks have more appropriate server_names for the incoming requests. Removing the new default https server will cause semi-correct behavior to resume: the websites with https will all load correctly; but the websites without https will all be routed to the first https server in the include files (which according to the docs, if no "default_server" appears, then the first server block to appear will be "default").

So my question is, what is the correct way to define a "default server" in nginx for ssl connections? Why is it that when I explicitly set a "default_server" it gets greedy and grabs all connections whereas when I implicitly let nginx decide the "default server" it works like I would expect (with the incorrect server set as default and the other real servers behaving correctly)?

Here are my "default servers". Http works without breaking other servers. Https breaks other servers and consumes all.

server {
    listen 443 ssl default_server;
    server_name _;

    access_log /var/log/nginx/maintenance.access.log;
    error_log /var/log/nginx/maintenance.error.log error;

    return 444;
}

server {
    listen *:80 default_server;
    server_name _;
    charset utf-8;

    access_log /var/log/nginx/maintenance.access.log;
    error_log /var/log/nginx/maintenance.error.log error;

    root /home/path/to/templates;

    location / {
        return 503;
    }

    error_page 503 @maintenance;

    location @maintenance {
        rewrite ^(.*)$ /maintenance.html break;
    }
}

Any of you see what might be wrong here?

Let's say a website is load-balanced between several servers. I want to run a command to test whether it's working, such as curl DOMAIN.TLD. So, to isolate each IP address, I specify the IP manually. But many websites may be hosted on the server, so I still provide a host header, like this: curl IP_ADDRESS -H 'Host: DOMAIN.TLD'. In my understanding, these two commands create the exact same HTTP request. The only difference is that in the latter one I take out the DNS lookup part from cURL and do this manually (please correct me if I'm wrong).

All well so far. But now I want to do the same for an HTTPS url. Again, I could test it like this curl https://DOMAIN.TLD. But I want to specify the IP manually, so I run curl https://IP_ADDRESS -H 'Host: DOMAIN.TLD'. Now I get a cURL error:

curl: (51) SSL: certificate subject name 'DOMAIN.TLD' does not match target host name 'IP_ADDRESS'.

I can of course get around this by telling cURL not to care about the certificate (the "-k" option) but it's not ideal.

Is there a way to isolate the IP address being connected to from the host being certified by SSL?

I'm working with Apache2 and Passenger for a Rails project. I would like to create a self-signed SSL Certificate for testing purposes.

sudo openssl rsa -des3 -in server.key -out server.key.new

When i enter the above command, it says

writing RSA key
Enter PEM pass phrase:

If i do not enter the pass phrse, im getting the below error

unable to write key
3079317228:error:28069065:lib(40):UI_set_result:result too small:ui_lib.c:869:Yo
u must type in 4 to 1024 characters
3079317228:error:0906406D:PEM routines:PEM_def_callback:problems getting passwor
d:pem_lib.c:111:
3079317228:error:0906906F:PEM routines:PEM_ASN1_write_bio:read key:pem_lib.c:382

Is it possible to generate a RSA key without giving pass phrase, since I am not sure how the /etc/init.d/httpd script will start the HTTP server without human intervention (i.e. If I give a 4 character pass phrase, it expects me to provide this while starting the Apache HTTP server).

I want to create a rule in nginx that does two things:

1. Removes the "www." from the request URI
2. Redirects to "https" if the request URI is "http"

There are plenty of examples of how to do each of those things individually, but I can't figure out a solution that does both correctly (i.e. doesn't create a redirect loop and handles all cases properly).

It needs to handle all of these cases:

1. http://www.example.com/path
2. https://www.example.com/path
3. http://example.com/path
4. https://example.com/path

These should all end up at https://example.com/path (#4) without looping. Any ideas?

Is there a way to share configuration directives across two nginx server {} blocks? I'd like to avoid duplicating the rules, as my site's HTTPS and HTTP content are served with the exact same config.

Currently, it's like this:

server {
  listen 80;
  ...
}

server {
  listen 443;

  ssl on; # etc.
  ...
}

Can I do something along the lines of:

server {
  listen 80, 443;
  ...

  if(port == 443) {
    ssl on; #etc
  }
}