Ruby Forum NGINX > Multiple ssl certs for the same IP?

I have foo.mydomain.com and bar.mydomain.com that both resolve to the 
same IP, which is answered by nginx.

Now I want to add SSL support to nginx so that it'll receive requests 
over ssl 443 for both fully qualified domains while still communicating 
with my backends over regular http (non-ssl).

So I will get two SSL certificates - one for foo.mydomain.com and the 
other for bar.mydomain.com.  However according to the config file the 
SSL settings for the key files are defined at the "server" 
declaration-block level.  And in my case I have just one "server" block 
that is used for both foo.mydomain.com and bar.mydomain.com.

So my question is regarding these such settings:
        ssl                  on;
        ssl_certificate      cert.pem;
        ssl_certificate_key  cert.key;

How can I tell nginx to use the pem and keyfiles for foo.mydomain.com 
AND bar.mydomain.com when the same "server" is listening for both FQDN 
domains (remember, both FQDN's resolve to the same IP and it will stay 
that way for some time to come.  Over time I may split these out).

Also it may be important to mention that I am NOT doing anything with 
virtual servers or host headers.  Rather, nginx routes the requests for 
both FQDNs solely by using the nginx "location" directive to serve 
content based on the path to the requested file.

So in summary, I get some requests like this:
  http://foo.mydomain.com/some/path/file.gif
and
  http://bar.mydomain.com/some/other/path/file.htm

and bar and foo resolve to the same IP and nginx serves both based on 
that IP and location matches, in some cases passing requests to upstream 
servers and in other cases serving the content itself.  And now I need 
to add SSL support using two signed certificates and have nginx use the 
correct one when requests come in. I hope I have explained this ok!

Thanks!!


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As far as I know, you will need a wildcard certificate (*.mydomain.com).
There is a chicken-and-egg problem in that nginx needs to see the 
request
URL before deciding which cert to use in the handshake.  However, nginx
cannot see the URL until the handshake has been completed.  See
http://wiki.apache.org/httpd/NameBasedSSLVHosts for more details.

On Sun, May 04, 2008 at 09:54:41AM -0700, Rt Ibmer wrote:
> How can I tell nginx to use the pem and keyfiles for foo.mydomain.com AND bar.mydomain.com when the same "server" is listening for both FQDN domains (remember, both FQDN's resolve to the same IP and it will stay that way for some time to come.  Over time I may split these out).

AFAIK this is impossible without some new (and not widely supported)
extensions to the SSL protocol. Please remember that the SSL negotiation
takes place before nginx can read the headers (which contain vhost
information). The extensions are described in RFC 4366.

You can specify several server blocks with the same listen ip:port
directive but it won't help you a bit with https, actually.

Nginx will use the certificate from the first server block configured to
listen on each IP address (well, maybe not the first, but only from a 
single
one, for reasons outlined above).

Your best bet would be to get a wildcard certificate for *.mydomain.com.

Best regards,
 Grzegorz Nosek

Grzegorz Nosek wrote:
> On Sun, May 04, 2008 at 09:54:41AM -0700, Rt Ibmer wrote:
>   
>> How can I tell nginx to use the pem and keyfiles for foo.mydomain.com AND bar.mydomain.com when the same "server" is listening for both FQDN domains (remember, both FQDN's resolve to the same IP and it will stay that way for some time to come.  Over time I may split these out).
>>     
>
> AFAIK this is impossible without some new (and not widely supported)
> extensions to the SSL protocol. 

I heard it's coming in Firefox3?

(Probably IE won't support it for another decade though...)

Ed W

On Sun, May 04, 2008 at 11:07:32PM +0100, Ed W wrote:

> >extensions to the SSL protocol. 
> 
> I heard it's coming in Firefox3?
> 
> (Probably IE won't support it for another decade though...)

This extension is called SNI. It supported by IE7, but only under Vista,
and I'm not sure will MS add these crypto DLLs in XP. Also SNI is 
supported
by Opera8 and Firefox2. To support SNI from nginx side OpenSSL-0.9.9
is required, that is currently in developing stage.