Question

DNS Networking redirects with Nginx to catch wildcards

Posted on May 18, 2017
Nginx Ubuntu 16.04 DNS Networking
Asked by ariziragoran

What i want to do:

Have two versions of the site, mobile and desktop.
Force naked URI, no www visible and redirect to appropriate mobile/desktop version.
Wildcard to catch all other gibberish and redirect to appropriate mobile/desktop version.

Desktop version: mysite.com Mobile version: m.mysite.com

/etc/nginx/sites-available/mysite.com

server {
        listen 80;
        listen [::]:80;
        server_name www.mysite.com;

        return 301 http://mysite.com;
}

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

        root /var/www/mysite.com/html;

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

        server_name mysite.com;

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

/etc/nginx/sites-available/m.mysite.com

server {
        listen 80;
        listen [::]:80;
        server_name www.m.mysite.com;

        return 301 http://m.mysite.com;
}

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

        root /var/www/m.mysite.com/html;

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

        server_name m.mysite.com;

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

What I have so far

mysite.com --> mysite.com (GOOD)
www.mysite.com --> mysite.com (GOOD)
test.mysite.com --> mysite.com (GOOD)
test.www.mysite.com --> mysite.com (GOOD)
www.test.mysite.com --> mysite.com (GOOD)
m.mysite.com/ --> http://m.mysite.com/ (GOOD)
www.m.mysite.com --> m.mysite.com (GOOD)
test.m.mysite.com --> mysite.com (WRONG), should redirect to m.mysite.com
test.www.m.mysite.com --> mysite.com (WRONG), should redirect to m.mysite.com
www.test.m.mysite.com --> mysite.com (WRONG), should redirect to m.mysite.com
test.m.test.mysite.com -> m.mysite.com (GOOD)

So i’ve mostly got it working, except there seems to be some issue with the wildcard redirects for the mobile version. I’d appreciate any help/feedback.

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Jonathan Tittle • May 18, 2017

Accepted Answer

@ariziragoran

When it comes to DNS WildCards, you’ll need to set them up using an A entry, which would look like:

A          *          DROPLET_IP

A          *.m        DROPLET_IP

The first DNS entry catches anything at the first level – www, test, forum.domain.com, etc. The second works much like the first, though it catches anything targeting m.domain.com, so:

test01.m.domain.com
test02.m.domain.com
etc

With NGINX, you would then specify the WildCard in the server_name, for example:

server_name domain.com www.domain.com *.domain.com

server_name m.domain.com www.m.domain.com *.m.domain.com;

The * entry tells NGINX to handle the WildCard requests, but it will only do so if the DNS is properly setup as noted above. Without the WildCard DNS, NGINX won’t handle the requests as expected.