certbot and nginx subdomain set on centos7

Question

I'm trying get a website with one subdomain (for the time-being) set up in nginx on a Centos7 server with ssl encryption provided by Let's Encrypt's certbot.

I have nginx successfully installed, I have set up my domains: example.com www.example.com and ci.example.com and gotten the certs issued without any problems (my browser says 'secured' and it auto redirects to https from http requests.)

Now I want to have ci.example.com to proxy through to the localhost:6500 port ( proxy_pass I believe it's called). I've tried following: this blog post from 2014 but nginx keeps serving the standard "Welcome to Nginx page".

All the other articles/tutorials are for an older version of nginx (that doesn't use /etc/nginx/nginx.conf.

Here is the /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

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 {
    server_name  example.com www.example.com;

    root        /usr/share/nginx/html;

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

    location / {
    }

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

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

listen [::]:443 ssl ipv6only=on; # managed by Certbot
listen 443 ssl; # managed by Certbot
ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot
ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot



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


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

if ($host = ci.example.com) {
    return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
} #added by me

    listen       80 default_server;
    listen       [::]:80 default_server;
    server_name  example.com www.example.com;
return 404; # managed by Certbot

Answer 1

I've figured it out and saving this for posterity.

I didn't set up nginx correctly before I ran the certbot --nginx command.

Here's what you are supposed to do:

From a clean install of Centos 7

ensure Centos is up to date through sudo yum update -y

then install nginx through: sudo yum install nginx -y

it comes default but this ensures it is up to date.

then follow this guide to get unsecured http://ci.yoursite.com and http://www.yoursite.com working as you want them.

Note - if you have issues with being unable to start nginx due to: [emerg] open() "/usr/share/nginx/logs/ci.yoursite.access.log" failed (13: Permission denied)

Use: su -c "setenforce 0" It will set SELinux to permissive mode and allow nginx to start.

then follow: This guide to get Let's Encrypt and Certbot --nginx working.

your final /etc/nginx/conf.d/ci.yourserver.conf should look like this to reroute to port 6500 in this example:

server {

    server_name ci.example.com;
    access_log logs/ci.example.access.log main;

    root /var/www/ci.example.com/html;
    index index.html index.htm;

    location / {
            proxy_pass http://localhost:6500;
            proxy_set_header Host $host;
            proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
            proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
            proxy_connect_timeout 150;
            proxy_send_timeout 100;
            proxy_read_timeout 100;
            proxy_buffers 4 32k;
            client_max_body_size 8m;
            client_body_buffer_size 128k;
            proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
            proxy_set_header Connection "Upgrade";
    }

listen [::]:443 ssl ipv6only=on; # managed by Certbot
listen 443 ssl; # managed by Certbot
ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/ci.example.com/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/ci.example.com/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot
ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot
}

server {
if ($host = ci.example.com) {
    return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
} # managed by Certbot


    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;

    server_name ci.example.com;
return 404; # managed by Certbot


}