Use SSL for NGINX

 

In this post we will review the steps required to configure SSL for NGINX.

Unlike many other articles, this post includes BOTH the NGINX configuration, and the keys creation steps.

This is intended for development environment, hence we will use a self signed certificate.

Create the Keys

We will create a server key and certificate.

sudo openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout nginx.key -out nginx.crt

The NGINX Configuratoin

The following runs both HTTP and HTTPS servers.

If required, the related HTTP listener can be removed.

user  nginx;
worker_processes  10;

error_log /dev/stdout debug;
pid       /var/run/nginx.pid;

load_module modules/ngx_http_js_module.so;
load_module modules/ngx_stream_js_module.so;

events {
    worker_connections  10240;
}

http {
    include         /etc/nginx/mime.types;
    default_type    application/octet-stream;
    include         /etc/nginx/resolvers.conf;

    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          on;
    sendfile            on;
    port_in_redirect    off;
    proxy_max_temp_file_size 0;
    keepalive_requests 1000000;
    keepalive_timeout 300s;

    server {
        listen       8080;
        listen       8443 ssl;
        server_name  localhost;

        ssl_certificate /etc/ssl/nginx.crt;
        ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/nginx.key;

        location / {
            # your configuration here
        }
    }
}