nginx redirect to domain when user enters IP address

Question

I have several domains configured for my websites on my VPS.

What I want to achieve is: If a user enters the IP address of my VPS directly on his/her browser, like this: https://X.X.X.X, I want it to redirect to one of my websites.

I was able to make it work for HTTP (http://X.X.X.X) like this:

server {
    listen       80;
    server_name  IP_OF_MY_VPS;

    return       301 https://example.com$request_uri;
}

However, if the user enters https://X.X.X.X, it doesn't work. Can someone please help out ?

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Dec 20 '20 at 22:14

2

You need to add a valid https block for the IP address.

However, since you cannot get certificates which can be used with an IP address, you will be left with a URL that gives a SSL error from the browser.

answered Dec 20 '20 at 22:14

Tero Kilkanen

36,796
3
41
63

2

https://stackoverflow.com/q/2043617 and for example https://www.ssl.com/faqs/order-ssl-tls-certificate-for-ip-address/ seem to indicate that it really depends on the CA if they will issue a certificate for an IP-address but there isn't anything technical that actually prevents them from issuing one. – Bob Dec 21 '20 at 07:58
Is there any other way then to redirect the user to my website when they enter the ip address directly in to the browser ? Because my website already has SSL to it. I just need to redirect user when they try to enter the IP address directly in the browser – Mervin Hemaraju Dec 21 '20 at 09:17
You need to have a certificate that lists the IP address in Subject Alternate Name field, along with your website's domain name. Your current certificate likely contains the domain name only. – Tero Kilkanen Dec 22 '20 at 19:02

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 20 '20 at 19:05

1

It's because HTTPS uses port 443. So just add another listen statement like this:

server {
    listen       80;
    listen       443;
    server_name  IP_OF_MY_VPS;

    return       301 https://example.com$request_uri;
}

answered Dec 20 '20 at 19:05

Noel Nemeth

111
7

It doesn't work. It gives me an error when i perform nginx -t : nginx: [emerg] no "ssl_certificate" is defined for the "listen ... ssl" directive in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default:1 nginx: configuration file /etc/nginx/nginx.conf test failed. I don't want to setup ssl again since my website already has ssl configured. I just want to redirecto the website. – Mervin Hemaraju Dec 20 '20 at 19:13
Sorry I didn't think so much in advance, try adding `ssl off;` – Noel Nemeth Dec 20 '20 at 19:28
Still doesn't work. – Mervin Hemaraju Dec 20 '20 at 19:33
Interesting, just tried it out and it works for me. – Noel Nemeth Dec 20 '20 at 19:36
I got the deprecated warning and an error statement. Can you provide the whole conf file please ? – Mervin Hemaraju Dec 20 '20 at 19:41
I just copy pasted your config and replaced the IP placeholder with actual IP address. – Noel Nemeth Dec 20 '20 at 19:46
When you go on https://IP_OF_VPS does it redirect you to the domain ? – Mervin Hemaraju Dec 20 '20 at 19:48
For the first time the browser showed me an SSL error, but after telling it to go to the page it redirected fine. I think because Nginx served my main certificate for that request too. – Noel Nemeth Dec 20 '20 at 19:53
Let us [continue this discussion in chat](https://chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/117488/discussion-between-noel-nemeth-and-mervin-hemaraju). – Noel Nemeth Dec 20 '20 at 20:18

nginx redirect to domain when user enters IP address

2 Answers2