Nginx cache does not set the "X-Proxy-Cache" header

Question

So I´m currently trying to implement caching on my NGINX webserver. For now I have a single conf file in my sites-enabled directory linked, which looks like this:

proxy_cache_path /var/cache/nginx levels=1:2 inactive=120s keys_zone=custom_cache:10m; server { root /var/www/html; server_name _; location / { proxy_cache custom_cache; proxy_cache_valid 60m; add_header X-Proxy-Cache $upstream_cache_status; try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html =404; } listen [::]:443 ssl http2 ipv6only=on; # managed by Certbot listen 443 ssl http2; # managed by Certbot ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.io/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.io/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot } server { if ($host = www.example.io) { return 301 https://$host$request_uri; } # managed by Certbot if ($host = example.io) { return 301 https://$host$request_uri; } # managed by Certbot listen 80; listen [::]:80; server_name example.io www.example.io; return 404; # managed by Certbot } 

NGINX wont throw any errors on that configuration, yet the "X-Proxy-Cache" header wont be set, indicating that the cache obviously isn´t working (the directory stays empty as well on the server machine, that I´m using). I´ve read multiple threads, where everyone was doing pretty much the same thing. Tho I´ve read in one of them, that the issue lies within the "$upstream_cache_status", which stays empty, because I´m not using any upstream that I proxy the request to, which totally makes sense (at first I thought the "$upstream_cache_status" would refer to the cache_status of the server block I´m writing in). So how can I approach this issue, so the caching would finally work?

Also here is my nginx.conf file in case it is somehow relevant for this problem:

user www-data; worker_processes auto; pid /run/nginx.pid; include /etc/nginx/modules-enabled/*.conf; events { worker_connections 768; # multi_accept on; } http { ## # Basic Settings ## sendfile on; tcp_nopush on; types_hash_max_size 2048; # server_tokens off; # server_names_hash_bucket_size 64; # server_name_in_redirect off; include /etc/nginx/mime.types; default_type application/octet-stream; ## # SSL Settings ## ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3; # Dropping SSLv3, ref: POODLE ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on; ## # Logging Settings ## access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log; error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log; ## # Gzip Settings ## # gzip on; gzip on; gzip_disable "MSIE [1-6]\.(?!.*SV1)"; gzip_vary on; gzip_types text/plain text/css text/xml text/javascript image/svg+xml image/x-icon application/x-javascript application/javascript application/xml; # gzip_vary on; # gzip_proxied any; # gzip_comp_level 6; # gzip_buffers 16 8k; # gzip_http_version 1.1; # gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript; ## # Virtual Host Configs ## include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf; include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*; } 

Cheers!

Answer 1

First, did you check the nginx-Configuration Tool? https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tools/nginx?global.app.lang=de

It is very handy for complex configuration scenarios.

Secondly, disable your weak chipers

ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3; # Dropping SSLv3, ref: POODLE ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on; 

by replacing

ssl_protocols TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3; ssl_ciphers ECDHE-ECDSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:ECDHE-ECDSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384:ECDHE-ECDSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:ECDHE-RSA-CHACHA20-POLY1305:DHE-RSA-AES128-GCM-SHA256:DHE-RSA-AES256-GCM-SHA384; 

About your caching issue (Docs found here):

Did you follow the Docs? My Basic example works out of the box:

nginx -v nginx version: nginx/1.18.0 

The Header is set:

wget -S -O - http://example.com HTTP request sent, awaiting response... HTTP/1.1 200 OK Server: nginx/1.18.0 Date: Wed, 01 Mar 2023 14:26:13 GMT Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Content-Length: 865 Connection: keep-alive X-Proxy-Cache: HIT Accept-Ranges: bytes 

/etc/nginx/conf.d/test.conf

server { server_name example.com; listen 80; listen [::]:80; location / { # Reverse Proxy proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000; index index.html index.htm index.php; limit_except HEAD GET POST {deny all;} proxy_ignore_headers "Set-Cookie"; proxy_hide_header "Set-Cookie"; proxy_cache STATIC; add_header X-Proxy-Cache $upstream_cache_status; proxy_cache_valid 200 302 60m; proxy_cache_valid 404 1m; } } 

/etc/nginx/nginx.conf

http { ## # Basic Settings ## proxy_cache_path /data/nginx/cache levels=1:2 keys_zone=STATIC:10m; 

The Cache folder:

$ /data/nginx/cache# ls 4 6 8 a b