Install Nginx

Create reverse proxy services.

1. Keep Hosts content up to date

If you have changed the hostname before, it may not have been updated in /etc/hosts. Correct this to avoid problems during installation.

# Specify the current hostname in /etc/hosts
sudo sed -i "s/^\(127\.0\.1\.1\s\+\)\S\+/\1$(hostname)/" /etc/hosts

2. Install Nginx

Nginx is a web server and reverse proxy service.

# Debian, Ubuntu, Kali, Linux Mint (APT)
sudo apt install -y nginx

# Red Hat, CentOS, Fedora, AlmaLinux, Rocky (DNF / YUM)
sudo dnf install -y nginx
sudo yum install -y nginx

# Arch, Manjaro (Pacman)
sudo pacman -S --noconfirm nginx

3. Specify permissions on the UFW side

Allow Nginx to be accessed from outside in the firewall.

# Allow required ports in UFW
sudo ufw allow "Nginx Full"

4. Create a service

Here we perform routing by creating a reverse proxy service.

# The name of the service will be service-b. '-b' represents 'backend'. You can use '-f' for your frontend server. It doesn't really matter, we just use it to separate the two servers
sudo tee /etc/nginx/sites-available/service-b.conf > /dev/null << EOF
  server {
    listen 80;
    server_name api.example.com;

    location / {
      proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000;
      proxy_http_version 1.1;

      proxy_set_header Upgrade \$http_upgrade;
      proxy_set_header Connection "upgrade";

      proxy_set_header Host \$host;
      proxy_set_header X-Real-IP \$remote_addr;
      proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For \$proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
      proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto \$scheme;
    }
  }
EOF

# Move to enable all services
sudo rm -rf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*.conf
sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/*.conf /etc/nginx/sites-enabled

# Restart the Nginx for everything to work properly
sudo systemctl restart nginx

TIP: Uninstall Nginx

This is how you can uninstall Nginx.

# Debian, Ubuntu, Kali, Linux Mint (APT)
sudo apt purge -y nginx

# Red Hat, CentOS, Fedora, AlmaLinux, Rocky (DNF / YUM)
sudo dnf remove -y nginx
sudo yum remove -y nginx

# Arch, Manjaro (Pacman)
sudo pacman -Rns --noconfirm nginx