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Background to the recommended installation

Using NGINX mainline

We recommend using NGINX mainline - by default, most Linux distributions will instead install NGINX stable. While the stable branch will receive security updates, the version number will not always reflect the latest published version of NGINX, and scanning tools and other security compliance frameworks in your organisation may deem this as a failure to patch to the latest version.

Using a custom error page

We recommend installing custom error pages for common HTTP errors. Without this, certain errors are handled by NGINX, and this can reveal the version number of NGINX; other errors are handled by Tomcat, and this can reveal information about the version of Tomcat in use, and a stack trace for the error.

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    proxy_intercept_errors on;
    error_page 400 401 402 403 404 405 406 407 408 409 410 411 412 413 414 415 416 417 418 421 422 423 424 425 426 428 429 431 451 500 501 502 503 504 505 506 507 508 510 511 /custom_error.html;
    location = /custom_error.html {
        internal;
        root /usr/share/nginx/html;
    }

Including a redirect to connections to port 80

Leaving port 80 open and including a redirect is widely recommended (including, for example, by Let’s Encrypt: https://letsencrypt.org/docs/allow-port-80/. In particular, this allows Let’s Encrypt to automatically renew the certificate using the default HTTP-01 challenge.

Hide version number

In this installation, we hide the version number on the default NGINX page. This is a useful security measure. Because errors are already redirected to a standard error page (see above), in this installation you are unlikely to see this in a browser. But this can be viewed using a client such as curl that does not apply the port 80 redirect, or by querying for the header information for the service.

Using Let’s Encrypt to provide certificates

The method below uses https://certbot.eff.org/ to issue and install certificates from https://letsencrypt.org/ to provide secure connections over HTTPS. Let’s Encrypt is a well known Certificate Authority (CA) that is free to use. Check with your organisation on standards for certificates. You may need to use a different public CA, or an internal CA. Using CAs aside from Let’s Encrypt is well documented on the web. In particular, most public CAs will document how their certificates can be installed into NGINX.

If you do not use Certbot, skip the section ‘Install certificate using Certbot’ below, and follow instructions appropriate for your CA.

Setting client_max_body_size

The client_max_body_size is set in the configuration below to allow files of sufficient size to be loaded into PhixFlow. (Note, this is specified in the "Content-Length" request header field.) In particular, this setting must allow configuration files to be uploaded into PhixFlow. Configuration files are used to move applications developed in the PhixFlow GUI between PhixFlow instances (e.g. from a test to a production system).

If PhixFlow users encounter problems loading files into PhixFlow, you may need to further increase this setting. Only authenticated users are able to trigger a file upload, and even then only certain users will have access to funtions that cause a file upload. Even in an instance of PhixFlow that is available through the public internet, general users who are not athenticated on PhixFlow are not able to upload arbitrary files into PhixFlow.

Upload size

150MB for NGINX file upload size? this is now needed on ops live, have raised this as it seems very large to me - however, only authenticated users can use this function - is there a way to have user specific limits in NGINX, don't see how

Installing with apt

The instructions below are based on installation on a Debian-based distribution of Linux, and use the apt command. If you are installing on a RedHat-based distribution of Linux, the equivalent yum commands for NGINX installation are well documented on the web.

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server {
    listen 443 ssl;
    listen [::]:443 ssl ipv6only=on;

    server_name [domain];

    proxy_intercept_errors on;
    error_page 400 401 402 403 404 405 406 407 408 409 410 411 412 413 414 415 416 417 418 421 422 423 424 425 426 428 429 431 451 500 501 502 503 504 505 506 507 508 510 511 /custom_error.html;
    location = /custom_error.html {
        internal;
        root /usr/share/nginx/html;
    }

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;
    }

    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/[domain]/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/[domain]/privkey.pem;
    include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf;
    ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem;
    client_max_body_size 40M150M;
    add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload";
}

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