GNet Solutions » FreeBSD Administration

I use nginx as both a reverse proxy and a web server, each their own server. While examining the log files I found that incoming requests to the backend web server were showing that they were coming from the proxy servers IP address and not from the actual clients IP address.

Proxy Server Frontend¶

• To start edit the proxy config:
  

  vi /usr/local/etc/nginx/proxy.d/www.example.com.conf
  

  • And add the following to the server block:
    

    proxy_set_header    Host            $host;
    proxy_set_header    X-Real-IP       $remote_addr;
    proxy_set_header    X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
    

• Then restart nginx:
  

  service nginx restart
  

Web Server Backend¶

• Recompile nginx with the real IP module:
  

  cd /usr/ports/www/nginx
  make config
  make reinstall clean
  

  • Make sure to enable [X]REALIP when configuring nginx

• On the web server backend, edit the server config:
  

  vi /usr/local/etc/nginx/conf.d/www.example.com
  

  • And add the following to the server block:
    

    set_real_ip_from  192.168.100.55; #Upstream proxy server address
    real_ip_header    X-Forwarded-For;
    

Resources¶

• http://blog.serverbeep.com/2012/08/real-ip-nginx-reverse-proxy/
• http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_realip_module.html