user with ssl-proxy, nginx problem

[Gábor Farkas]

hi,

i'm facing a strange problem here, maybe someone had
experience with this before...

i have an nginx server, which server some files using HTTPS,
and http-basic-auth.

because nginx had ssl-problems in the past, in the past we had this config:

- we had an apache server, listening on port 443, that got the requests,
did the ssl-handling, and then proxied the request to nginx. so nginx 
did not do any SSL-stuff.
- and everything worked fine.

but now we switched to an nginx-only solution, and starting to have 
problems with one user, who uses a https proxy.

in the past, for him the file-download worked this way:

- the java app requested the file, got a HTTP 401 (Unauthorized) response
- so the java app requested the file again, but now it sent the 
necessary username/password, and got the file (and a HTTP 200)
- and all was ok

after we switched to the nginx-only solution, this is what happens:

- the java app requests the file, gets a http 400 (not 401)
- so the java app retries, and gets the http 400 again
- this happens 5 times, and then the java app gives up

in the nginx access log, i see 5 http 401 (Unauthorized) accesses, and i 
see that the client did not send the username/password.


also, an additional detail:

using a web-browser, the user is able to download from the server fine, 
even when using the https proxy.

with this info, i would usually blame the java-app, but the strange 
thing is, that in the past with the apache+nginx config, it worked fine.

i tried to migrate every setting from the apache-server to the nginx-server,
even the ssl_cipher settings, but it did not help.

any ideas?

thanks,
gabor