CODEWITHSUNDEEP
expressnginxhttpspm2nginx-reverse-proxy
Maverick
Maverick

Reputation: 2760

How to listen to different port on Nginx and proxy the request?

I am a newbie to Nginx config and all, I have a process which is an express app, running on port 3000 using pm2 and I have allowed port 3000 using ufw as well, and have made a server instance on Nginx to proxy it, 

    server {
        # SSL configuration

        listen 443 ssl http2;
        listen [::]:443 ssl http2;
        server_name .mysite.co;
        location = /favicon.ico { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
        location /static/ {
            root /home/django/mysite;
        }
        proxy_cache mysite;
        location / {
            include proxy_params;
            proxy_pass http://unix:/home/django/mysite/mysite.sock;
        }
        gzip_comp_level  3;
        gzip_types       text/plain text/css image/*;
        ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/mysite.co/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
        ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/mysite.co/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot



    }
    server {
        if ($host = www.mysite.co) {
            return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
        } # managed by Certbot


        if ($host = mysite.co) {
            return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
        } # managed by Certbot


        listen 80 default_server;
        listen [::]:80 default_server;
        server_name .mysite.co;
        return 404; # managed by Certbot




    }

server{

    listen 3000;
    listen 443 ssl http2;
    server_name .mysite.co:3000;

    location / {
        proxy_pass https://localhost:3000;
    }

    }

I ran netstat -napl | grep 3000 and I could confirm that the process is running and pm2 status also says its running and no errors in log as well. How could I make this work? Thanks for the help in advance.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 11001

Answers (1)

Elliot Blackburn
Elliot Blackburn

Reputation: 4164

You won't be able to use nginx to listen on port 3000 as well as your node process as only one service can really listen on the port at once. So you'll need to ensure nginx is listening for connections on a different port. I imagine what you're trying to do is to listen on port 80 / 443 and then send the request onto your express service which is listening on port 3000?

In this case your bottom server block is nearly correct. To get this working without TLS/SSL (just on port 80) you'll want to use something like this:

server {
       listen 80;
       server_name node.mysite.co

       location / {
            proxy_pass http://localhost:3000;
       }
}

The following is a very basic example and you'll probably want to toggle some other settings. This will make "http://node.mysite.co" go proxy through to whatever service (in this case an Express server) is listening on port 3000 locally.

You do not need to make a firewall (ufw) exception for port 3000 in this case as it's a local proxy pass. You should close the port on the firewall so people can't access it directly, this way the must go through nginx.

If you want to get SSL/TLS working, you'll want another block that'll look something like the following. Again, this is very basic and doesn't have a lot of settings you probably want to research and set (such as cipher choices).

server {
       listen 443 ssl;
       server_name node.mysite.co

       ssl_certificate certs/mysite/server.crt;
       ssl_certificate_key certs/mysite/server.key;

       location / {
            proxy_pass http://localhost:3000;
       }
}

You'll need to replace the cert and key path to point to your SSL/TLS ceritifcate and key respectively. This will enable you to access https://node.mysite.co and it'll be proxied onto the service on port 3000 as well.

Once you've done that you might then choose to go back and change the http (port 80) server to a redirect to https to force https only connections.

Also note that I've ensured the server_name is different to your existing django server_name with a subdomain (node.mysite.co). You might wish to change this value but you can't have two server blocks listening on the same port and server_name, otherwise nginx would have no idea what to do with the request. I'm sure you're doing this anyway but I wanted to make sure it was explicit and would work with your existing setup.

If you wish the site to be served only for mysite.co:3000

If for some reason you want the user to go to port 3000 on the domain mysite.co, then you will need to set the "listen" to 3000 and keep the server name as "mysite.co". This will allow someone to go to mysite.co:3000 in their browser and hit your node service. I imagine this isn't really what you want for a public facing website though, it also won't line up very nicely with your port 443 version.

Note: I don't claim to be an nginx expert, but I've used it for all my node projects for the past few years and I find this setup to be pretty clear. There might be some nicer syntax you can use.

Upvotes: 6

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