CODEWITHSUNDEEP
node.jsnginx
friedrich
friedrich

Reputation: 21

404 error when connecting to IP address but not in domain name

I ran a website with Nginx and NodeJS on Lightsail.

When I go to my mywebsite.com, my website is accessible and is secure. However, when I try to enter the public IP for that website, Nginx returns a 404 error page. The website is certified by LetsEncrypt.

I do manage to access the IP address on the browser by adding http:// before the IP address. However, when I normally go to my IP address, Nginx returns a 404 error. Why is this so?

I'm fine with the IP being not accessible. But my CDN is not working because of it. I think it needs to be accessible and not return a 404 page?

Why do I go about diagnosing and solving this problem?

Thanks in advance.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 3433

Answers (1)

Dai
Dai

Reputation: 154995

The Host: header identifies the hostname/domain-name used by the browser to access a website when the webserver is serving multiple websites on the same TCP binding (IP address + port number + protocol). The webserver then uses that to determine what content to serve.

Web-browsers generate the Host: header from the URI in the address bar.

When you access http://1.2.3.4/foobar your browser sends this request:

GET /foobar
Host: 1.2.3.4

When you access http://example.com/foobar your browser sends this request:

GET /foobar
Host: example.com

When you access http://www.example.com/foobar your browser sends this request:

GET /foobar
Host: www.example.com

When you access https://example.com/foobar (or https://www.example.com/foobar) as opposed to http://example.com and http://www.example.com) the HTTP request messages (i.e. the request headers) requests are the same as their http: equivalents but the underlying HTTP connection is wrapped in a TLS (formerly SSL) connection.

In your case, you need to edit your nginx configuration to add another binding to your website that maps http://<IP-address> to your website, as well as https://<IP-address>. You need to check your web-application's code to ensure that it can handle requests using unexpected Host: headers - you can also configure nginx to modify the Host header for incoming requests to your usual header.

If you're using HTTPS then you'll need to add your IP address as a SAN (Subject Alternate Name) to your TLS certificate - which is generally a bad idea because IP addresses change and LetsEncrypt doesn't provide certificates for IP addresses anyway so this is moot.

For dev purposes and when you're running nginx locally (i.e. http://localhost) then you no-longer need a TLS certificate for localhost because since early 2020 Chromium-based browsers now recognize http://localhost as being a "secure" website even though it's over http:// and not https://:

For an immediate workaround, you can use a browser-extension to override the Host: header when you're accessing a site by IP address.

e.g.:

Upvotes: 2

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