Script for installing/prepping nginx

Prepping nginx

I use nginx for all my "in-house" applications, but also for other things.
This script is targeted towards Debian-based systems, as I usually rely on Ubuntu/Debian for server stuff.

This is a mirror of a GitHub Gist: https://gist.github.com/Decicus/2f09db5d30f4f24e39de3792bba75b72
The GitHub Gist link should be considered the "master copy". This wiki page is mainly for explaining the scripts and copies of said script/configs may be outdated.
A Git mirror can be found on my personal Gitea instance of said GitHub Gist, in case it ever goes down.

This prep script does the following:

• Downloads and installs nginx, openssl, curl
• Installs acme.sh for Let's Encrypt certificates
• Creates a directory for SSL certificates (/srv/ssl) and sets the correct permissions to prevent other users from snooping.
• Downloads a file for loading the acme.sh environment and Cloudflare API (DNS) variables, mainly to replace the automatic acme.sh loading.
  • Cloudflare API information is used for utilizing the DNS API.
  • Generally I have to manually remove the environment loader that acme.sh automatically adds to bashrc/zshrc, so it's not "double". Haven't added anything to handle that for me yet.
• Downloads an nginx config for Let's Encrypt's webroot authentication.
  • Points (via alias) all requests to /.well-known/acme-challenge to a single directory /var/www/html/.well-known/acme-challenge
• Downloads an nginx config for "good" TLS/SSL settings
  • Settings are based on the "intermediate NGINX settings" from Mozilla's configuration generator
  • An alternative is to check cipherli.st.
• Downloads an nginx config for PHP (7.4) FPM
  • This isn't used in the base "virtualhost" config by default, as it's commented.
• Downloads a script to generate dhparams via OpenSSL
  • At this point I forget why this is good to have, so read this link I found on the first Google result
• Links to a base virtualhost config in the terminal :)

Files below were last updated April 30th, 2021. Check the GitHub Gist linked further up for updated script/configs.

setup.sh

The actual prep script, all links refer to the GitHub gist's "raw" URLs.

#!/bin/bash
# Make sure the 'essentials' are installed
sudo apt install -y nginx-full openssl curl

# Get acme.sh for issuing certificates
curl -L https://get.acme.sh/ | sudo bash

GIST="https://gist.github.com/Decicus/2f09db5d30f4f24e39de3792bba75b72/raw"
NGINX="/etc/nginx"
SSL_BASE="/srv/ssl"

# Create preferred base directory for storing SSL certificates
mkdir -p $SSL_BASE
chown -R root:root $SSL_BASE
chmod -R 600 $SSL_BASE

# Now the fun starts

# I have bash scripts that interact with acme.sh
# But I use zsh as the main shell
# Therefore I need a shared "environment file" that loads acme.sh
# And related environment variables
curl -L "$GIST/.acmeenv" > "$HOME/.acmeenv"

# Get the alias config for Let's Encrypt challenges:
curl -L "$GIST/letsencrypt.conf" > "$NGINX/letsencrypt.conf"

# Get the base SSL configuration
curl -L "$GIST/ssl_params.conf" > "$NGINX/ssl_params.conf"

# Get the PHP 7.4 FPM configuration (not enabled by default)
# You also need to install PHP before enabling it.
curl -L "$GIST/phpfpm.conf" > "$NGINX/phpfpm.conf"

# Get the dhparams file generation script, and execute.
curl -L "$GIST/generate-dhparams.sh" | sudo bash

# Add to ZSH/Bash config files
echo '. "$HOME/.acmeenv"' >> "$HOME/.zshrc";
echo '. "$HOME/.acmeenv"' >> "$HOME/.bashrc";

echo "Base setup done. Open this link for a base nginx site configuration: $GIST/000-default.conf"

000-default.conf

Base virtualhost config

server {
    listen 80 default_server;
    listen [::]:80 default_server;

    include letsencrypt.conf;

    server_name _;
    return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}

server {
    listen 443 ssl http2;
    listen [::]:443 ssl http2;
    server_name _;
    root /var/www/html;

    ssl_certificate /srv/ssl/default/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /srv/ssl/default/key.pem;

    server_tokens off;
    
    include ssl_params.conf;
    include letsencrypt.conf;

    add_header X-Frame-Options "SAMEORIGIN";
    add_header X-XSS-Protection "1; mode=block";
    add_header X-Content-Type-Options "nosniff";
    add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=63072000; includeSubDomains; preload";

    index index.nginx-debian.html index.html index.htm;

    charset utf-8;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
    }

    location /.well-known {
        auth_basic "off";
    }

    location = /favicon.ico { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
    location = /robots.txt  { access_log off; log_not_found off; }
    
    # Uncomment for PHP support (check /etc/nginx/phpfpm.conf), assumes PHP 7.2 FPM is installed.
    # include phpfpm.conf;

    access_log /var/log/nginx/default-access.log combined;
    error_log  /var/log/nginx/default-error.log error;

    location ~ /\.ht {
        deny all;
    }
}

generate-dhparams.sh

#!/bin/bash
sudo touch /etc/nginx/dhparams.pem
sudo chmod 700 /etc/nginx/dhparams.pem
# 4096 would also work here:
sudo openssl dhparam -out /etc/nginx/dhparams.pem 2048

letsencrypt.conf

location /.well-known/acme-challenge {
    alias /var/www/html/.well-known/acme-challenge;
}

phpfpm.conf

location ~ \.php$ {
    try_files $uri =404;
    fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
    fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock;
    fastcgi_index index.php;
    include fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root/$fastcgi_script_name;
}

ssl_params.conf

ssl_protocols TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3;
ssl_ciphers ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384;
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers off;
ssl_dhparam /etc/nginx/dhparams.pem;
ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:10m;
ssl_session_timeout 1d;
ssl_session_tickets off;

.acmeenv

. "$HOME/.acme.sh/acme.sh.env"

export CF_Account_ID=""
export CF_Token=""