Pass real client IP to web servers

[Maxim Dounin]

Hello!

On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 07:53:31PM -0400, bdroste wrote:

> Subject: Pass real client IP to web servers
> Author: bdroste
> 
> I'm sure this has been asked before, but I can't find an answer.  I'm running nginx-0.7.44 on a server, load balancing port 80 to port 8080 on 2 other servers running Apache.  I am trying to figure out how to get Nginx to pass the real IP address of the browser client through to the web servers.  The web servers always log the IP address of the Nginx server instead of the client.
> 
> A Google search suggested that I needed to run a Apache proxy server on each of my web servers that then pass the request on to my real web server, so the headers are rewritten.  That works, but it seems I should be able to do this with Nginx and not need to run an intermediate web server just to pass the traffic to my real web servers.

[...]

>     proxy_set_header  X-Real-IP  $remote_addr;
>     proxy_set_header  X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;

You should configure Apache to accept ip address from X-Real-IP or 
X-Forwarded-For headers set by nginx (and from nginx server ip).  
Take a look at mod_realip or mod_rpaf/mod_rpaf2 apache modules.

As you said that running Apache proxy on each of your web servers 
fixes the issue - probably you already have one of the modules 
above, but configured to accept X-Real-IP/X-Forwarded-For from 
localhost only.

Maxim Dounin