Nginx – “SSL_ERROR_INTERNAL_ERROR_ALERT” Using Let’s Encrypt & Nginx

You could have multiple server blocks. So just add new server block for domains that need HSTS.

server {
    listen xx.xx.xxx.xxx:443 ssl default_server;

    # all ssl stuff
    # and other directives
}

server {
    listen xx.xx.xxx.xxx:443 ssl;
    server_name example.com other.example.com;

    # all ssl stuff
    # and other directives with HSTS enabled
}

Here first block will handle all https connections except example.com and other.example.com.

And you don't need ssl on directive if you have ssl flag in listen.

EDIT

There is another solution with only one server block:

map $scheme:$host $hsts_header {
    default "";
    https:example.com "max-age=31536000";
    https:other.example.com "max-age=31536000";
}

server {
    server_tokens off;

    listen xx.xx.xxx.xxx:80;
    listen xx.xx.xxx.xxx:443 ssl;

    ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/foo.crt;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/private/foo.key;

    ssl_session_timeout 10m;

    # ... other ssl stuff

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:81;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Port $server_port;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block";
        add_header Strict-Transport-Security $hsts_header;
    }
}

We use map to define HSTS header value and use the fact, than nginx will not add header with empty value.

Those two errors was unrelated although the error message was same.

[...]SSL-Session: Protocol : TLSv1.2 Cipher : ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384 [...] Start Time: 1411583991 Timeout : 300 (sec) Verify return code: 20 (unable to get local issuer certificate)

Above error was issued openssl_client command. As explained by Florian Heigl, you get this error because the openssl_client need the Globalsign Root cert in /etc/ssl/certs.

OCSP_basic_verify() failed (SSL: error:27069065:OCSP routines:OCSP_basic_verify:certificate verify error:Verify error:unable to get local issuer certificate) while requesting certificate status, responder: gv.symcd.com

For this error, it was issued by nginx ocsp routine, especially when you add ssl_stapling_verify on; line in nginx.conf.

Here some excerpt from the documentation of ssl_stapling_verify to explain why it throws the error

Syntax: ssl_stapling_verify on | off;

Enables or disables verification of OCSP responses by the server.

For verification to work, the certificate of the server certificate issuer, the root certificate, and all intermediate certificates should be configured as trusted using the ssl_trusted_certificate directive.

In other words, you need provide (2) Intermediate CA Bundle (RapidSSL SHA256 CA - G3) and (3) Intermediate CA Bundle (GeoTrust Global CA) to ssl_trusted_certificate directive.

cat GeoTrustGlobalCA.crt rapidsslG3.crt > ocsp-chain.crt

and add ocsp-chain.crt to ssl_trusted_certificate directive.