Nginx and Discourse is redirect looping with SSL

Installation
1

I have Discourse on port 5001 (HTTP), and 5002 (HTTPS), but the problem is that its redirect looping, also known as ERR_TOO_MANY_REDIRECTS on Chrome.

My Nginx configuration, with SSL. I got this configuration from DigitalOcean, specifically this article
I changed the SSL certificates, as well as the domain, and the port that I use. The configuration is using Lets Encrypt.

(I replaced the real domain with example.com)

server {
        listen 80;
        server_name example.com;
        return 301 https://example.com$request_uri;
}
server {
        listen 443 ssl spdy; 
        server_name example.com;
        ssl_certificate *****;
        ssl_certificate_key *****;
        ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
        ssl_ciphers 'ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-DSS-AES128-GCM-SHA256:kEDH+AESGCM:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES128-SHA:DHE-DSS-AES128-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA256:DHE-DSS-AES256-SHA:DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA:ECDHE-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:ECDHE-ECDSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:AES128-GCM-SHA256:AES256-GCM-SHA384:AES128-SHA256:AES256-SHA256:AES128-SHA:AES256-SHA:AES:CAMELLIA:DES-CBC3-SHA:!aNULL:!eNULL:!EXPORT:!DES:!RC4:!MD5:!PSK:!aECDH:!EDH-DSS-DES-CBC3-SHA:!EDH-RSA-DES-CBC3-SHA:!KRB5-DES-CBC3-SHA';
        ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
        location / {
                proxy_pass      http://example.com:5001/;
                proxy_read_timeout      90;
                proxy_redirect  http://example.com:5001/ https://example.com;
        }
}

Help appreciated, I am not sure if I should enable SSL on discourse or not, but I would assume so.

1 Like
2

I found a fix for it. Sorry for the post. took me a while to understand what is happening. The Digital Ocean article should probably be fixed up.

This is what I used for configuration, it works for me.

server {
    listen 80;
    location / {
      proxy_set_header        Host $host;
      proxy_set_header        X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
      proxy_set_header        X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
      proxy_set_header        X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;

      proxy_pass          http://localhost:5001;
      proxy_read_timeout  90;
    }
}

server {

    listen 443;
    server_name example.com;

	ssl_certificate /var/discourse/shared/standalone/ssl/example.com.cer;
	ssl_certificate_key /var/discourse/shared/standalone/ssl/example.com.key;

    ssl on;
    ssl_session_cache  builtin:1000  shared:SSL:10m;
    ssl_protocols  TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
    ssl_ciphers HIGH:!aNULL:!eNULL:!EXPORT:!CAMELLIA:!DES:!MD5:!PSK:!RC4;
    ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;

    access_log            /var/log/nginx/example.com.access.log;

    location / {

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

      proxy_pass          https://localhost:5002;
      proxy_read_timeout  90;
    }
  }

5002 is my Discourse SSL port, and 5001 is regular HTTP on discourse.
nginx serves 443 and 80

3

You’ll probably want to let DigitalOcean know to fix their article, then. We don’t have any editorial control over what they have on their site.

1 Like
4

Well, apparently I was wrong.

I am still having the redirect loop issue, but only on some of my devices, and some browsers. I am completely unsure what is happening now, and could use help from someone with good experience with nginx.

I should also mention the website is behind cloudflare, which may have a factor in this issue, or could be the issue itself, unsure.

Edit: I disabled routing through cloudflare, and it appears to have resolved my issue, so take note, if you have a redirect issue using when using cloudflare, try disabling the routing for a bit of time and see if it fixes it. If you can’t disable that, then try changing your DNS to your server manually via hosts file.

5

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