CloudFlare and Real IP

Product Support Self-hosting

AI-generated summary

A user is trying to get real IP addresses to show up in Discourse when using Cloudflare, but the remote_addr is not being set correctly despite having the proper Cloudflare configuration in discourse.conf. bitwelder confirms they are using the Cloudflare template and that the CF-Connecting-IP header contains the correct IP, but the issue stems from Docker IPs being used instead. pfaffman suggests checking for a reverse proxy and adding its IP to set_real_ip_from, while Stephen questions if the standard install was followed. bitwelder resolves the issue by identifying that Immunify360 on their VPS was acting as a proxy, and temporarily fixing it by adding the Docker IP to the configuration.

1

I have been trying to get real ips to show up in Discourse without much success. I have add the cloudflare yml to my setup and have validated the discourse.conf in the container has the correct lines:

set_real_ip_from 173.245.48.0/20;
set_real_ip_from 103.21.244.0/22;
set_real_ip_from 103.22.200.0/22;
set_real_ip_from 103.31.4.0/22;
set_real_ip_from 141.101.64.0/18;
set_real_ip_from 108.162.192.0/18;
set_real_ip_from 190.93.240.0/20;
set_real_ip_from 188.114.96.0/20;
set_real_ip_from 197.234.240.0/22;
set_real_ip_from 198.41.128.0/17;
set_real_ip_from 162.158.0.0/15;
set_real_ip_from 104.16.0.0/13;
set_real_ip_from 104.24.0.0/14;
set_real_ip_from 172.64.0.0/13;
set_real_ip_from 131.0.72.0/22;
set_real_ip_from 2400:cb00::/32;
set_real_ip_from 2606:4700::/32;
set_real_ip_from 2803:f800::/32;
set_real_ip_from 2405:b500::/32;
set_real_ip_from 2405:8100::/32;
set_real_ip_from 2a06:98c0::/29;
set_real_ip_from 2c0f:f248::/32;
real_ip_header CF-Connecting-IP;

I have also validated that $http_cf_connecting_ip has the correct IP in the logs but for some reason $remote_addr is not being set properly. Has anyone else hit this?

2

Maybe use the cloudflare template?

add

  - "templates/cloudflare.template.yml"

to your app.yml where the other templates are.

3

Thanks for the response! I am using the cloudflare template. After further digging it appears that it is not working because all remote_addr coming into nginx are Docker addresses. I am trying to diagnose why this is.

4

Are you also using a local reverse proxy server? If so, you’ll need to add that address to your set_real_ip config (and maybe the reverse proxy will handle the cloudflare stuff?)

5

I am not intentionally running a reverse proxy but I have specified a specific IP for exposing ports in my app.yml.

expose:
  - "xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:80:80"    # http
  - "xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:443:443"  # https
6

I don’t know. Maybe you need to include some docker IPs?

Is the IP that’s getting displayed by Discourse a docker ip?

7

Did you follow the standard install? This usually works out of the box with the template.

8

Thank you both for the help! It ended up that Immunify360 on our VPS was injecting itself as a proxy prior to the container. Adding the Docker IP to the set_real_ip_from temporarily fixed the issue while I look into disabling Immunify.