nginx reverse proxy "ip address shows"

Question

I have nginx serving the example.com website on my server. The same server is running a tomcat installation serving the http://server_ip:8080/app webapp (which is a spring MVC webapp, secured with Spring Security).

I want to be able to access the tomcat webapp using the http://app.example.com address. What I did is configure nginx as a reverse proxy as follows (in the app.example.com configuration file under sites-enabled):

server {
  listen          80;
  server_name     app.example.com;
  root            /var/lib/tomcat7/webapps/app;


  location / {
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Server $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_pass http://server_ip:8080/;
  }
}

where server_ip is the IPv4 address of my server.

Also, in the /etc/tomcat7/server.xml file I added:

<Host name="localhost"  appBase="webapps" unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true">
    <Context path="" docBase="app">
         <WatchedResource>WEB-INF/web.xml</WatchedResource>
     </Context>
    <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.AccessLogValve" directory="logs"
           prefix="localhost_access_log." suffix=".txt"
           pattern="%h %l %u %t &quot;%r&quot; %s %b" />

</Host>

so that tomcat is by default sending me to the app webapp when I access http://server_ip:8080 (the app webapp is the only thing it is serving anyway).

Now, if I access http://app.example.com I get the login page for the app webapp alright; however, after logging in, the URL field of the browser is showing http://server_ip:8080 instead of http://app.example.com, as I would expect.

Anybody has a hint of what is causing this? All guides I found on the net seem to suggest a configuration like the one I have. I would love if someone could confirm if the configuration is ok, because that may point to a cause other than server config (may be related to the way spring security redirects after login).

Thanks.

Answer 1

You missed

proxy_set_header Host $host;

And actually, I don't see any reason to have X-Forwarded-Host and X-Forwarded-Server headers.