How to fix nginx default configuration after installing an let's encrypt SSL on digital ocean with Ubuntu 18.04?

Question

I had my website running but SSL was only working on non-www. After I reinstalled the let's encrypt SSL certificate the site crashed. I was able to make the front run but not the api.

I moved the site to a new droplet and installed Nginx, Pm2, and certbot with python on Ubuntu 18.04 with Nodejs.

The site is not loading and it is a bit frustrating. I think the issue was that certbot rewrited the ngix default file and I am not sure how to fix it.

This is the configuration I have on /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

upstream my_app {
    server 127.0.0.1:3000;
}
server {
  #listen 80;
  listen   [::]:80;
  #listen 443 ssl;
  #listen [::]:443 ssl;

  if ($host = www.mysite.com) {
      return 301 https://mysitehere$request_uri;
  }

  server_name roomies.es;

  listen 443 ssl;
  ssl on;
  ssl_certificate    /etc/letsencrypt/live/mysite.com/fullchain.pem;
  ssl_certificate_key    /etc/letsencrypt/live/mysite.com/privkey.pem;

    if ($ssl_protocol = "") {
       rewrite ^   https://$server_name$request_uri? permanent;
    }

  location / {

    proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
    proxy_set_header X-NginX-Proxy true;
    proxy_pass         https://mysite_app;
    proxy_redirect off;
    proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
    proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";
  }


  location ~ /.well-known {
    allow all;
  }

}
```

I need the front to run on port 3000 and my api on port 4000.

Thanks in advance!

Jake Jake · Accepted Answer · 2019-07-09T12:19:51

This is how I had to set up my NGINX configs after installing Let's Encrypt:

/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default (which should be the same file as /etc/nginx/sites-available/default):

# Default server configuration
server {

        root /var/www/html;

        # Add index.php to the list if you are using PHP
        index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;

        server_name example.com;

        return 301 https://www.example.com$request_uri;

        location / {
                # First attempt to serve request as file, then
                # as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404.
                try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
        }

    listen 443 ssl; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
    include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot
    ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot

}

To be clear, the return 301 is to ensure all non-www traffic is moved to the www version of the URL.

Remember to save your config on a notepad or something so you can quickly revert back to the original if this doesn't work.

How to fix nginx default configuration after installing an let's encrypt SSL on digital ocean with Ubuntu 18.04?

1 Answers