Nginx – Can’t access Nginx webserver after configuring SSL

nginxsslssl-certificate

I have a development version of a Django website with domain name "mysite.com" I used to access my site via the URL "http://web01.mysite.com". I've just installed a wildcard digital certificate and now I can't reach the site. If I use either "https://web01.mysite.com" or "http://web01.mysite.com", I get a quick "ERR_CONNECTION_REFUSED" message. I've read Nginx's SSL doc, numerous blog posts on setting up SSL on Nginx, and researched this error but I can't figure out what's wrong.

My server is Debian 8.7. I'm running Nginx 1.6.2 and "–with-http_ssl_module" is one of the configure arguments. I'm also using the default nginx.conf file.
The nginx process runs under the default account 'www-data'.

My certificate and private key file are located in this directory:

drwr-xr-x   root  root  /srv/ssl/mysite.com/

Here are my bundled certficate and private key files which reside in the above directory:

-r--r-----  root  www-data  ssl-bundle.crt
-r--r-----  root  www-data  mysite.com.key

When I configured the wildcard certificate, I specified "*.mysite.com" as the Common Name.

Here is my /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/mysite.conf file:

server_tokens off;
upstream gunicorn {
    server 127.0.0.1:8000 fail_timeout=0;
}

server {
    #listen 80;
    listen 443 ssl;
    server_name web01.mysite.com;
    ssl_certificate /srv/ssl/mysite.com/ssl-bundle.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key /srv/ssl/mysite.com/mysite.com.key;

    location / {
        root /srv/http/mysite.com/repo;

        # Redirect all HTTP requests to HTTPS
        rewrite ^ https://$server_name$request_uri permanent;
    }

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

    client_max_body_size 4G;
    keepalive_timeout 5;

    # Pass static file requests to the file server
    location /static/ {
        proxy_pass http://45.33.33.53;
    }
    location /media/ {
        alias /var/www/mysite.com/media/;
    }

    try_files $uri @django;

    location @django {
        proxy_pass http://gunicorn;
        proxy_redirect off;
        proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;

        # Capture originating IP address of client
        # This allows me to view the HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR field in request.META
        # in my login_firewall view.
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    }
}

I've opened up port 443 on my firewall:

Chain INPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination         
ACCEPT     all  --  anywhere             anywhere            
REJECT     all  --  loopback/8           anywhere             reject-with icmp-port-unreachable
ACCEPT     icmp --  anywhere             anywhere             state NEW icmp echo-request
ACCEPT     tcp  --  anywhere             anywhere             tcp dpt:ssh state NEW
ACCEPT     tcp  --  anywhere             anywhere             tcp dpt:http state NEW
ACCEPT     tcp  --  anywhere             anywhere             tcp dpt:https state NEW
ACCEPT     all  --  anywhere             anywhere             state RELATED,ESTABLISHED
LOG        all  --  anywhere             anywhere             limit: avg 5/min burst 5 LOG level debug prefix "iptables_INPUT_denied: "
REJECT     all  --  anywhere             anywhere             reject-with icmp-port-unreachable

Chain FORWARD (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination         
LOG        all  --  anywhere             anywhere             limit: avg 5/min burst 5 LOG level debug prefix "iptables_FORWARD_denied: "
REJECT     all  --  anywhere             anywhere             reject-with icmp-port-unreachable

Chain OUTPUT (policy ACCEPT)
target     prot opt source               destination         

If I do "sudo netstat -plnt | grep nginx", I can see Nginx is listening on port 443:

tcp   0   0 0.0.0.0:443   0.0.0.0:*   LISTEN    25537/nginx -g daem

I've checked the nginx error log (with debug on) and it's empty. I did reload the nginx config files after I changed them.

Does ssl.conf need to be included from either nginx.conf or my mysite.conf file? This answer mentions that as a requirement but I didn't see this discussed in the Nginx docs nor in any of the configuration articles I read online.

Does anyone see what I'm doing wrong?

Best Answer

It looks like you're redirecting from https to https causing a redirection loop. I don't know why you'd be getting a connection refused message from that, but your comment above confirms this.

Your second problem, 403 Forbidden, is likely a permissions issue. Does the user Nginx is running as (user directive in nginx.conf) have permission to the resources that the applicable location block is referencing?

Related Topic