REMOTE_ADDR not getting sent to Django using nginx

Question

So I got a simple setup with nginx for static media and load balancing and tornado as webserver for django (4 servers running). My problem is remote_addr not getting passed on to django so I'm getting a KeyError:

article.ip = request.META['REMOTE_ADDR']

The remote address is getting sent through as X-Real-IP (HTTP_X_REAL_IP) thanks to the nginx.conf:

    location / {
        proxy_pass_header Server;
        proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
        proxy_redirect false;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Scheme $scheme;
        proxy_pass http://frontends;
    }

As HTTP is prepended to the META key I can't just do proxy_set_header remote_addr $remote_addr. What I could do is read the X-Real-IP if no remote addr key is found but I'm curious if there's a smarter solution.

Thanks!

Answer 1

For me, using the following worked:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name foo.bar.com;
    location / {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8000;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr;
    }
}

This works with django 1.4 (specifically, localshop).

Answer 2

Try this one:

location / {
    proxy_pass http://frontends;
    proxy_pass_header Server;
    proxy_redirect off;
    proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
    proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
    proxy_set_header X-Scheme $scheme;
    proxy_set_header REMOTE_ADDR $remote_addr;
}

Just add proxy_set_header REMOTE_ADDR and it should be work well.

Tried with:

• Django 1.5.4
• Nginx 1.4.3
• Tornado 2.2.1

Answer 3

No, it's not possible to pass on remote_addr. So the only solution that I know of is to use X-Real-IP or X-Forwarded-For and make sure that the backend handles these correctly.

Edit: this applies to fastcgi_pass, not regular nginx proxy_pass

Answer 4

I have a similar setup. After putting nginx in front of apache, I noticed that the IP in the apache logs was always 127.0.0.1. Installing "libapache2-mod-rpaf" seemed to fix it. I have no idea if your problem is related.

Answer 5

Here's how I solved the problem. By using this middleware:

class SetRemoteAddrMiddleware(object):
    def process_request(self, request):
        if not request.META.has_key('REMOTE_ADDR'):
            try:
                request.META['REMOTE_ADDR'] = request.META['HTTP_X_REAL_IP']
            except:
                request.META['REMOTE_ADDR'] = '1.1.1.1' # This will place a valid IP in REMOTE_ADDR but this shouldn't happen

Hope that helps!

Answer 6

Add "fastcgi_param REMOTE_ADDR $remote_addr;" to the nginx.conf file:

    location / {
    # host and port to fastcgi server
    fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:8801;
    fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_script_name;
    fastcgi_param REQUEST_METHOD $request_method;
    fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING $query_string;
    fastcgi_param CONTENT_TYPE $content_type;
    fastcgi_param CONTENT_LENGTH $content_length;
    fastcgi_pass_header Authorization;
    fastcgi_intercept_errors off;
    ...
    # Add this line!
    fastcgi_param REMOTE_ADDR $remote_addr;
    ...
}

Source: how to nginx virtual servers + fcgi for django?