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nginx

This role installs and configures the nginx web server. The user can specify any http configuration parameters they wish to apply their site. Any number of sites can be added with configurations of your choice.

Requirements

This role requires Ansible 2.6.2 or higher and platform requirements are listed in the metadata file.

Role Variables

The variables that can be passed to this role and a brief description about them are as follows.

# The max clients allowed
nginx_max_clients: 512 

# The user to run nginx
nginx_user: "www-data"

# A list of hashs that define the servers for nginx,
# as with http parameters. Any valid server parameters
# can be defined here.
nginx_sites:
 default:
     - listen 80
     - server_name _
     - root "/usr/share/nginx/html"
     - index index.html
 foo:
     - listen 8080
     - server_name localhost
     - root "/tmp/site1"
     - location / { try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html; }
     - location /images/ { try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html; }
 bar:
     - listen 9090
     - server_name ansible
     - root "/tmp/site2"
     - location / { try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html; }
     - location /images/ {
         try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;
         allow 127.0.0.1;
         deny all;
       }

# A list of hashs that define additional configuration
nginx_configs:
  proxy:
      - proxy_set_header X-Real-IP  $remote_addr
      - proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for
  upstream:
      - upstream foo { server 127.0.0.1:8080 weight=10; }
  geo:
      - geo $local {
          default 0;
          127.0.0.1 1;
        }
  gzip:
      - gzip on
      - gzip_disable msie6

# A list of hashs that define user/password files
nginx_auth_basic_files:
   demo:
     - foo:$apr1$mEJqnFmy$zioG2q1iDWvRxbHuNepIh0 # foo:demo , generated by : htpasswd -nb foo demo
     - bar:$apr1$H2GihkSo$PwBeV8cVWFFQlnAJtvVCQ. # bar:demo , generated by : htpasswd -nb bar demo

Configuring protection against bots

Some ways to limit the bots' request rates:

  1. Using the robots.txt file. But unfortunately some bots don't follow the robots.txt settings.

  2. Denying access to bots based on the user-agent header. This solution is only for bots that are considered unnecessary or harmful.

  3. Using nginx to limit requests: https://www.nginx.com/blog/rate-limiting-nginx/

The three options mentioned above can be configured with this ansible role.

The following links contain very interesting examples and settings:

Using a global robots.txt for all sites

It is enabled with:

nginx_use_global_robots_txt: True

By default, it adds the following robots.txt to all sites:

"User-agent: *"
"Crawl-delay: 60"

To use a different robots.txt file, please use the nginx_global_robots_txt list. For instance:

nginx_global_robots_txt:
  - "User-agent: Googlebot"
  - "Allow: /"
  - "Crawl-delay: 60"

Denying access to bots based on user-agent header

Just enable the following variable:

nginx_use_bots_deny_list: True

It blocks the access of bots whose user-agent header matches the nginx_bots_deny_list list. You can use a custom list of user-agent strings that will be proccessed by nginx as a regex:

nginx_bots_deny_list:
  - bot_user_agent_header_1
  - bot_user_agent_header_2
  - bot_user_agent_header_3

The default http-status output is "403", but you can redefine it with the nginx_bots_deny_list_status variable.

Using nginx request limit

This role allows to configure a request limit for bots (based on user-agent header) and the other connections (the ones that do not match our bot filter).

To enable bots request limit, set:

nginx_use_bots_request_limit: True

To enable request rate limit on other connections:

nginx_use_default_request_limit: True

Both settings can be activated at the same time or independently.

There are some variables that you can use for fine tuning the request rate limit:

nginx_bots_request_limit_rate: "1r/m"
nginx_bots_request_limit_burst: 2
nginx_bots_request_limit_nodelay: "yes"
nginx_bots_request_limit_shared_memory_zone: "10m"
nginx_bots_request_limit_use_x_forwarded_for: False

nginx_default_request_limit_rate: "100r/s"
nginx_default_request_limit_burst: 15
nginx_default_request_limit_nodelay: "yes"
nginx_default_request_limit_shared_memory_zone: "50m"
nginx_default_request_limit_use_x_forwarded_for: False

nginx_request_limit_status: 429

More info at: https://www.nginx.com/blog/rate-limiting-nginx/

Sometimes it is better to apply the rate limit based on x_forwarded_for header instead of source ip address, for instance when there's a reverse proxy as frontend and we are configuring the request rate limit in the backend server.

To use the x_forwarded_for header, just enable them:

nginx_bots_request_limit_use_x_forwarded_for: True
nginx_default_request_limit_use_x_forwarded_for: True

The default http status when reaching the rate limit is 429. It can be changed in nginx_request_limit_status variable:

nginx_request_limit_status: 429

Examples

  1. Install nginx with HTTP directives of choices, but with no sites configured and no additionnal configuration:

    • hosts: all roles:
      • {role: nginx, nginx_http_params: ["sendfile on", "access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log"] }

  2. Install nginx with different HTTP directives than previous example, but no sites configured and no additionnal configuration.

    • hosts: all roles:
      • {role: nginx, nginx_http_params: ["tcp_nodelay on", "error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log"]}

Note: Please make sure the HTTP directives passed are valid, as this role won't check for the validity of the directives. See the nginx documentation for details.

  1. Install nginx and add a site to the configuration.

    • hosts: all

      roles:

      • role: nginx, nginx_http_params:
        • sendfile "on"
        • access_log "/var/log/nginx/access.log" nginx_sites: bar:
          • listen 8080
          • location / { try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html; }
          • location /images/ { try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html; } nginx_configs: proxy:
          • proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr
          • proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for

Note: Each site added is represented by list of hashes, and the configurations generated are populated in /etc/nginx/site-available/, a link is from /etc/nginx/site-enable/ to /etc/nginx/site-available

The file name for the specific site configurtaion is specified in the hash with the key "file_name", any valid server directives can be added to hash. Additional configuration are created in /etc/nginx/conf.d/

  1. Install Nginx , add 2 sites (different method) and add additional configuration

    • hosts: all roles:
      • role: nginx nginx_http_params: sendfile: "on" access_log: "/var/log/nginx/access.log" nginx_sites: foo: - listen 8080 - server_name localhost - root /tmp/site1 - location / { try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html; } - location /images/ { try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html; } bar: - listen 9090 - server_name ansible - root /tmp/site2 - location / { try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html; } - location /images/ { try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html; } nginx_configs: proxy: - proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr - proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for

  2. Install Nginx , add 2 sites, add additional configuration and an upstream configuration block

    • hosts: all roles:
      • role: nginx nginx_http_params: sendfile: "on" access_log: "/var/log/nginx/access.log" nginx_sites: foo: - listen 8080 - server_name localhost - root /tmp/site1 - location / { try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html; } - location /images/ { try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html; } bar: - listen 9090 - server_name ansible - root /tmp/site2 - if ( $host = example.com ) { rewrite ^(.*)$ http://www.example.com$1 permanent; } - location / { try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html; } - location /images/ { try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html; } - auth_basic "Restricted" - auth_basic_user_file auth_basic/demo nginx_configs: proxy: - proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr - proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for upstream: # Results in: # upstream foo_backend { # server 127.0.0.1:8080 weight=10; # } - upstream foo_backend { server 127.0.0.1:8080 weight=10; } nginx_auth_basic_files: demo: - foo:$apr1$mEJqnFmy$zioG2q1iDWvRxbHuNepIh0 # foo:demo , generated by : htpasswd -nb foo demo - bar:$apr1$H2GihkSo$PwBeV8cVWFFQlnAJtvVCQ. # bar:demo , generated by : htpasswd -nb bar demo

Create a default site to deny all requests without a configured virtualhost

All these requests to non configured virtualhosts are going to be denied with 444 status code (specific to the Nginx - it closes connection to the server without any response). This new site will also not send any line to logs (access or error).

Just set as True the nginx_use_default_deny variable (default False). Then the role will create a site default-deny (and it's self-signed certificate):

server {

   listen 80 default_server;
   listen [::]:80 default_server;
   listen 443 ssl http2 default_server;
   listen [::]:443 ssl http2 default_server;
   server_name _;
   ssl_ciphers aNULL;
   ssl_session_tickets off;
   ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl-certs/default_deny.crt;
   ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl-certs/default_deny.pem;
   return 444;
   access_log off;
   error_log /dev/null;

}

Dependencies

None

License

BSD

Author Information

  • Original : Benno Joy
  • Modified by : DAUPHANT Julien
  • Modified by : Artefactual Systems