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I'm having a problem with my nginx server configuration. The current behavior is that if a domain can't be found in any of the configuration files, it will redirect to a random other configuration. Instead, I would like to simply display a 404 error or something similar.

I've looked into using "default_server", and looked at other solutions - but then I noticed this:

If I use "default_server" in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/, and test it with nginx -t, it'll warn me about a duplicate: nginx: [emerg] a duplicate default server for 0.0.0.0:80 in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/catchall:5. I searched for the duplicate using grep -R default_server /etc/nginx, and there is only one file that has default_server in it: /etc/nginx/nginx.conf.

Now, my confusion starts when I look at that file: It clearly already does what I wanted to do, in this block:

...

server {
  listen 80 default_server;
  listen [::]:80 default_server;


server_name _;


server_name_in_redirect off;
  log_not_found off;


return 410;
}


include /etc/nginx/conf.d/.conf;
include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/;


...

My question is: Why does this not work already? Why does a wrong domain that isn't listed in any of the config files not default to a 410 error? Does the nginx.conf even do something? What am I missing here?

I feel uncomfortable changing nginx.conf without asking what the best approach here is, first. All I want to achieve, is to NGINX not randomly jumping to other domains if it can't find a specific domain.

How can I make a 404 catchall and where can I place it?

Katai
  • 225

1 Answers1

0

Thanks to the help Richard and Dom, I managed to figure out the real issue:

The catchall in nginx.conf works - but only for HTTP. The thing is, what was happening here is that there is no real default_server for SSL. It just picks the best match, out of all configurations (in my case, the first configuration handled by CertBot).

I implemented this solution, to solve my case:

https://jonnev.se/nginx-default-server-with-https/

(based on this question: Properly setting up a "default" nginx server for https )

Katai
  • 225