Question

Nginx, SSL, multiple domains

Posted on July 6, 2015
Nginx Ruby on Rails
Asked by kitchencoders

Hi folks!

Have been straggling around nginx.conf for multiple domains.

This is what I have

3 domains
SSL cert
Droplet
nginx

I want to redirect all https, https://www, http, http://www to one of the domain from these 3. Simply saying, all should go to just https://www.example.com

ssl_certificate /var/www/domain1.com/shared/ssl/bundle.crt; 
ssl_certificate_key /var/www/domain1.com/shared/ssl/www_domain1_com.key;
ssl_verify_depth 3;

server {
	listen         *:80;
	server_name    www.domain1.com domain1.com www.domain2.com domain2.com www.domain3.com domain3.com;
	return         301 https://www.domain1.com$request_uri;
}

server {
	listen         *:443 ssl;
	server_name   domain1.com www.domain2.com domain2.com www.domain3.com domain3.com;
	return         301 https://www.domain1.com$request_uri;
}


server {
    	server_name www.domain1.com;
    	listen 443 ssl;
    	root /var/www/domain1.com/current/public;
    	access_log /var/www/domain1.com/current/log/nginx.access.log;
    	error_log /var/www/domain1.com/current/log/nginx.error.log info;
}

these above config does not have any configuration issues. nginx -t give “ok”.

But the problem is that all https requests (which are not from domain1.com) trying to shake ssl hands which is not true. they should 301-ing to www.domain1.com

I have tried doing some playing around in default config, seemed do not help!

any suggestions - would be great!

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Kamal Nasser

DigitalOcean Employee

• June 15, 2016

Accepted Answer

Hi!

Because of the way TLS/SSL works, the whole handshake and encryption process must be done before receiving any HTTP headers or the response body (as all HTTP traffic is passed through the TLS/SSL ‘tunnel,’ so it has to be established first).

So you will have to create valid HTTPS server blocks for every one of the domains and configure that to redirect to the domain that you want.

server {
    listen         *:443 ssl;
    server_name   domain1.com;
    ssl_certificate /path/to/domain1.crt; 
    ssl_certificate_key /path/to/domain1.key;
    return         301 https://www.domain1.com$request_uri;
}

server {
    listen         *:443 ssl;
    server_name   domain2.com www.domain2.com;
    ssl_certificate /path/to/domain2.crt; 
    ssl_certificate_key /path/to/domain2.key;
    return         301 https://www.domain1.com$request_uri;
}

server {
    listen         *:443 ssl;
    server_name   domain3.com www.domain3.com;
    ssl_certificate /path/to/domain3.crt; 
    ssl_certificate_key /path/to/domain3.key;
    return         301 https://www.domain1.com$request_uri;
}