Issue with Redirects After Adding SSL Certificate to XNAT

[Ruba]

Dear all,

I recently added an SSL certificate to XNAT. However, when I try to log in using https://domain/Login.vm#!, it always redirects me to the HTTP URL (shows "unable to connect"). Manually changing the URL back to HTTPS allows me to access the home page. A similar issue occurs when logging out—an "unable to connect" error is displayed and redirect to the http url.

The nginx configuration is here:

server {
    listen 443 ssl;
    #listen 80;
    server_name domain_name;

    ssl_certificate     /etc/ssl/certs/2024/cert.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/private/2024/cert.key;

    location / {
        proxy_pass                          http://localhost:8080;
        proxy_redirect http://localhost:8080 https://$host;
        #proxy_redirect                      http://localhost:8080 $scheme://localhost;
        proxy_set_header Host               $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP          $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host   $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Server $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For    $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto https;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Port 443;
        proxy_connect_timeout               150;
        proxy_send_timeout                  100;
        proxy_read_timeout                  100;
        proxy_buffers                       4 32k;
        client_max_body_size                0;
        client_body_buffer_size             128k;
    }
}

Could you please assist with resolving this redirect issue?

Thank you.

Best,

Ruba

[Chidi Ugonna]

Hi Ruba, you can try and add another server entry in the nginx configuration to redirect http traffic. something like where 192.138.10.1 is your server url.

server {

listen 80 default_server;

listen [::]:80 default_server;

server_name 192.138.10.1;

return 301 https://$server_name$request_uri;

}

[Ruba]

Thank you, Chidi.

I have added that section to the config file, but using the default_server parameter caused Nginx to fail loading, so I omitted it. The updated section is as follows. Unfortunately, I am still getting the same error.

server {

     listen 80;
     server_name domain.xnat.ca;
     return 301 https://$server_name$request_uri;

}
server {
    listen 443 ssl;
    #listen 80;

    server_name fdopa.nan.kcl.ac.uk;

    ssl_certificate     /etc/ssl/certs/2024/fdopa_nan_kcl_ac_uk.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/ssl/private/2024/fdopa_nan_kcl_ac_uk.key;

[Amr Bassam Shadid]

Hi Ruba,

Based on your description, the issue likely stems from XNAT's internal security settings rather than just the NGINX configuration.

To resolve this, you can update XNAT's security settings as follows:
Log into XNAT as an Admin ->

Go to Administer > Site Administration.
In the left-hand menu, select the Security section.
Locate the option for "Security Channel".
Change the setting to either:
https (recommended): Forces all traffic to use HTTPS.
any (alternative): Allows both HTTP and HTTPS traffic 
Save Changes
Click Save or Apply to confirm the update.

If your NGINX configuration is already set up with HTTP-to-HTTPS redirection (as shown in your example), this change in XNAT should address the issue.

Best,
Amr

[Ruba]

Thank you, Amr. 

I have already tried that, but selecting 'https' option resulted in being unable to load the application. I came across a post in this group mentioning that it could be an issue because Tomcat doesn’t handle SSL directly.

Best,

Ruba

[Chidi Ugonna]

Hi Ruba,

We have XNAT set up to use http and https. I notice some differences between your nginx configuration and ours. See below where the domain name is mydomain1.university .edu - hope you can get your setup working the way you want!

server {

  listen 443 ssl;

  server_name mydomain1.university.edu;

  ssl on;

  ssl_session_cache builtin:1000 shared:SSL:10m;

  ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;

  ssl_ciphers HIGH:!aNULL:!eNULL:!EXPORT:!CAMELLIA:!DES:!MD5:!PSK:!RC4;

  ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;

  ssl_certificate /path/to/domain.pem;

  ssl_certificate_key /path/to/domain.pem;

  location / {

   proxy_pass http://mydomain1.university.edu:8080;

   proxy_redirect off;

   proxy_set_header Host $host;

   proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;

   proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host $host;

   proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Server $host;

   proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;

   proxy_connect_timeout 600;

   proxy_send_timeout 600;

   proxy_read_timeout 600;

   send_timeout 600;

   proxy_buffers 4 32k;

   client_max_body_size 0;

   client_body_buffer_size 128k;

  }

  access_log /var/log/nginx/xnat.access.log;

  error_log /var/log/nginx/xnat.error.log;

}

server {

  listen 80 default_server;

  listen [::]:80 default_server;

  server_name mydomain1.university.edu;

  return 301 https://$server_name$request_uri;

}

[Rick Herrick]

Ruba, make sure you’ve set the site URL to the https version of the URL. If it’s still http://blah that would explain why it’s redirecting to that address rather than the secure version.

 

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[Ruba]

Hi Chidi and Rick,

Thank you for your input. I have already updated the site URL through the admin panel.

However, I am still encountering this issue where the link http://domain-name/app/template/Login.vm appears whenever I try to log in or log out of the system. So far, I have only made changes to the /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/xnat file. Are there any other configurations I should update?

Thank you for your guidance.

Best regards,
Ruba

[Ruba]

Hi all,

Thank you for your help.

I just wanted to share the solution I found for this problem, in case others face something similar. The issue was related to configuring Tomcat to communicate with Nginx over HTTP while Nginx handles SSL termination. Here's what I did:

1. Updated the HTTP <Connector> in server.xml:

<Connector port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1"
           connectionTimeout="20000"
           redirectPort="443"
           proxyName="your-domain.com"
           proxyPort="443" />

2. Configured RemoteIpValve to handle forwarded headers:

I added the following under the <Host> section in server.xml to ensure Tomcat correctly interprets forwarded headers from Nginx:

<Host name="localhost" appBase="webapps" unpackWARs="true" autoDeploy="true">
    <Valve className="org.apache.catalina.valves.RemoteIpValve"
           remoteIpHeader="x-forwarded-for"
           protocolHeader="x-forwarded-proto"
           protocolHeaderHttpsValue="https" />
</Host>

After making these changes and restarting Tomcat and Nginx, everything worked as expected.

Best regards,

Ruba

[Carlos A]

Hi,

I am facing this issue in the Docker version, but I could not manage to solve this problem using your advices.

My settings are the same than Ruba's

Any advice on this?

Regards

[Carlos A]

Hi,

I managed to solve this issue by including the scheme in the Connector.

<Connector port="8080" protocol="HTTP/1.1"

...

               proxyName="..."
               proxyPort="443"
               scheme="https"