Nginx Server_Name Wildcard or Catch-All
I Have an Instance of Nginx Running Which Serves Several Websites. the First Is a Status Message on the Server's Ip Address. the Second Is an Admin Console on...
I have an instance of nginx running which serves several websites. The first is a status message on the server's IP address. The second is an admin console on admin.domain.com. These work great. Now I'd like all other domain requests to go to a single index.php - I have loads of domains and subdomains and it's impractical to list them all in an nginx config.
So far I've tried setting server_name to * but that failed as an invalid wildcard. *.* works until I add the other server blocks, then I guess it conflicts with them.
Is there a way to run a catch-all server block in nginx after other sites have been defined?
N.B. I'm not a spammer, these are genuine sites with useful content, they're just powered by the same CMS from a database!
8 Answers
Change listen option to this in your catch-all server block. (Add default_server) this will take all your non-defined connections (on the specified port).
listen 80 default_server;
if you want to push everything to index.php if the file or folder does not exist;
try_files $uri /$uri /index.php;
Per the docs, It can also be set explicitly which server should be default, with the **default_server** parameter in the listen directive
As a convention, the underscore is used as a server name for default servers.
From
In catch-all server examples the strange name “_” can be seen:
server { listen 80 default_server; server_name _; return 444; }There is nothing special about this name, it is just one of a myriad of >invalid domain names which never intersect with any real name. Other >invalid names like “--” and “!@#” may equally be used.
Note that server_name _; alone is not enough. The above example only works because of default_server in the listen directive.
This will work:
server_name ~^(.+)$
Only 1 server directive
From Nginx listen Docs
The default_server parameter, if present, will cause the server to become the default server for the specified address:port pair. If none of the directives have the default_server parameter then the first server with the address:port pair will be the default server for this pair.
If you only have 1 server directive, that will handle all request, you don't need to set anything.
Multiple server directive
If you want to match all request with specified server directive, just add default_server parameter to listen, Nginx will use this server directive as default.
server {
listen 80 default_server;
}
About server_name _;
From Nginx Docs
In catch-all server examples the strange name “_” can be seen:
server { listen 80 default_server; server_name _; return 444; }There is nothing special about this name, it is just one of a myriad of invalid domain names which never intersect with any real name. Other invalid names like “--” and “!@#” may equally be used.
It doesn't matter what server_name you set, it is just an invalid domain name.
For me somehow define default_server was not working. I solved it by
server_name ~^.*$
using regular expression of all.
Now you can use mask:
server {
listen 80;
server_name *.example.org;
...
}
server {
listen 80;
server_name mail.*;
...
}
Look more here:
If you also want to catch requests with empty Host header (which is allowed in HTTP/1.0) you can use both regex and empty server_name:
server {
listen 80;
server_name ~. "";
}
Try $http_host
server {
server_name $http_host;
}
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