...Incoming burst...

Let’s setup a reverse proxy on Debian with nginx, using nginx server.

We will work on a single machine, using the loopback interface (i.e. 127.0.0.1). Pre-requisites:

• an HTTP server active and listening (e.g. 127.0.0.1:8080)
• an entry in your hosts file redirecting a domain name of your choice to your loopback interface.

In our example, we will use example.com, and the hosts file entry will look like this:

127.0.0.1 example.com

Let’s install it:

sudo apt install nginx

By default, you will find nginx’s configuration at /etc/nginx/.

Deactivate the default configuration, by first removing the symlink to the default configuration then restart the server:

unlink /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
service nginx restart

You can signal the server to reload it’s configuration by sending a SIGHUP:

nginx -s reload

Create a reverse proxy configuration file at /etc/nginx/sites-available/myproxy.conf:

server {
  listen 80;
  server_name www.example.com

  location / {
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;
  }

}

Create a symlink to the sites-enabled folder:

link /etc/nginx/sites-available/myproxy.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/myproxy.conf

The previous configuration produces the following:

• nginx server listens on port 80 (i.e. HTTP)
• accepts the following url http://www.example.com/
• redirects requests to a webserver listening on port 8080 at 127.0.0.1

Let’s verify the configuration’s integrity:

nginx -t

In case of error, read it and fix it.

Now reload the server:

nginx -s reload

Test it.

...Sent by Lazy Monkey...