SOLVED NGINX as a reverse proxy: Cannot override cPanel's cpanel-proxy.conf settings

[kalexan]

Hello.
I have recently set up NGINX as a reverse proxy using WHM at a server of mine. Some PHP applications rely on

$_SERVER['HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING']

variable in order to gzip output content, however it seems that settings at /includes-optional/cpanel-proxy.conf prevent the variable from being set and passed to Apache at the following line:

proxy_set_header Accept-Encoding ""; # Optimize encoding

What I would like to configure is:

proxy_set_header Accept-Encoding $http_accept_encoding;

however, due to the conf file hierarchy set by cPanel, there is no way I can override this line. Below is an example of a user specific file (/etc/nginx/conf.d/users/USERX.conf) as set by cPanel, and it is the last "block" that is processed before passing the request to Apache:

### main domain for USERX##
server {
   ....
    location / {
       ...
        include conf.d/includes-optional/cpanel-proxy.conf;
        proxy_pass $scheme://$CPANEL_APACHE_PROXY_REQ_IP:$CPANEL_APACHE_PROXY_REQ_PORT;
    }
...
}

As you can see, there is no way I can override cpanel-proxy.conf. Note that includes-optional/cpanel-proxy.conf and /users/USERX.conf files are always overwritten when NGINX is updated or NGINX settings change, for example at NGINX® Manager.

Can anybody suggest a simple workaround? Do you agree that cpanel-proxy.conf should be overridable? Is there somekind of a "template" of /includes-optional/cpanel-proxy.conf that I can edit, in order to be used when cPanel updates this file?

Thank you in advance for your replies!

 

[cPanelAnthony]

Hello! I will look into this and get back to you.

 

[kalexan]

Hello! Any news on this?

 

[cPRex]

Hey there - it looks like cPanelAnthony didn't get to this. I've reached out to our webserver team to see what the options are and I'll post a reply once I have more details.

 

[cPRex]

I confirmed this behavior on a test system and filed case CPANEL-39876 with our team to see if that is something that can be adjusted in the future. I'll be sure to update this thread once I receive an update, but it's also a good idea to keep an eye on the changelogs at Change Logs | cPanel & WHM Documentation to watch for that case number.

 

[cPDan]

Hello @kalexan !

You can accomplish this by putting a `.conf` file in `/etc/nginx/conf.d/includes-optional/cpanel-proxy-vendors/` that does what you want.

e.g. `/etc/nginx/conf.d/includes-optional/cpanel-proxy-vendors/my-proxy-overrides-go-here.conf`

Also, this sprint we are adding GZIP support to NGINX so in a few weeks that may simplify things for you I added this forum post to the case to update once it gets published so you’ll know about it

 

[kalexan]

Solution applied and worked like a charm! Should have better investigated ./includes-optional/cpanel-proxy.conf : it has a declaration that includes .conf files from ./includes-optional/cpanel-proxy-vendors/ folder at the end of it, however this folder did not physically exist, so I created it manually and placed a new .conf file with my overrides there.

Thanks @cPDan !

 

[cPRex]

Thanks @cPDan !!!

 

[cPDan]

Solution applied and worked like a charm! Should have better investigated ./includes-optional/cpanel-proxy.conf : it has a declaration that includes .conf files from ./includes-optional/cpanel-proxy-vendors/ folder at the end of it, however this folder did not physically exist, so I created it manually and placed a new .conf file with my overrides there.

Thanks @cPDan !

Excellent, I’m glad it worked for you! Happy to help