Fronting Virtualmin/Apache with Nginx (a la Plesk, but better)

Howdy -- I don't imagine you'd consider varnish rather than Nginx?

We actually have a tutorial describing how to do that with Varnish:

https://www.virtualmin.com/documentation/system/varnish

Varnish doesn't actually natively offer support SSL:

https://www.varnish-cache.org/docs/3.0/phk/ssl.html

We don't have any formal support for Nginx as a front end, though if you have questions regarding things like how to use the command line tools we can do that.

If you run a command such as "virtualmin list-domains --domain DOMAIN.TLD --simple-multiline", that will generate a bunch of info regarding that domain.

If you look at the "Type" parameter, you can see if it's an alias.

You can check to see if the variable $PARENT_DOMAIN_DOM is set or not. When the variable is set, the domain is either a sub-server or an alias. You can then check if this variable does not end with $DOMAIN_DOM to ensure that it is not a sub-server, and at last it is possible to use sed to update the server_name line! I guess the syntax would be something like this (Not tested):

sed -i /etc/nginx/vhosts/$VIRTUALSERVER_DOM.conf -e "s/server_name\(.*\)\s$PARENT_DOMAIN_DOM\swww\.$PARENT_DOMAIN_DOM\(.*\)/server_name\s\1$PARENT_DOMAIN_DOM\swww\.$PARENT_DOMAIN_DOM\s$DOMAIN_DOM\swww\.$DOMAIN_DOM\s\2/"

The best way to check if a domain being created is by using the $VIRTUALSERVER_ALIAS variable - if it is non-empty, it contains the ID of the alias's target domain.

@Lucian please update your first post with the final version of your script once you've finished it! I'm interested in this!

Im currently using nginx+apache on my servers however it doesnt support SSL as nginx is forwarding all requests to apache:

server {
        listen 80 default;
        server_name _;
        root /var/www;
        client_max_body_size 20M;

        location / {
                access_log      off;
                proxy_pass http://PUBLIC-IP:81;
                proxy_set_header X-Real-IP  $remote_addr;
                proxy_set_header Host $host;
                proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
                proxy_read_timeout 120;
                proxy_connect_timeout 120;
        }
}

It worked for me as well!

You should replace: proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For \$remote_addr; with proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for; to make it correct.

I used the following proxy pass instead

        location / {

        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP  \$remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For \$proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header Host \$host;
        proxy_pass http://$VIRTUALSERVER_IP:81;
        }

to forward all requests to apache so that .htaccess files work fine! As you see, I have used $VIRTUALSERVER_IP:81 instead of 127.0.0.1:1080 because virtualmin creates apache virtual servers with the same IP as the dns IP of the domain. You can easily modify the server template and update apache port to listen on the port 81 though.

Jamie are we going to implement this nice feature? Plesk and Directadmin both have this feature with mod_aclr2! This can go far with the new virtualmin PHP-FPM feature to directly serve php files as well! (Plesk has done this!)

Sorry I just edited my post. $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for is different from $remote_ip when a X_FORWARDED_FOR header is set by the client (e.g. when using cloudflare for your domains). See this and this

There is another thing here, you should replace

with

since the apache virtual host is removed when web feature or the virtual server are disabled

I was searching for similar requirement for Ubantu 16.04 LTS. currently in this post and in github repository it says only for Cent OS. I would like to know is all the steps are same for Ubantu server or do i need to do any additional action??.

I am new to Virtualmin and webhosting, I dont want to mess existing installation.

also would like to know, is this feature already integrated to the new version of virtualmin 5.x or yet to integrate it??

Many thanks