Unable to access Elastic Beanstalk (single instance) from custom domain HTTPS - node.js

Question

Greetings SO community,
I am attempting to configure my single-instance Elastic Beanstalk application to use a custom domain and HTTPS. Both the custom domain and SSL certificate were obtained from a third-party and uses their DNS servers (rather than Route 53).
I have added the .ebextensions/https-instance-securitygroup.config per AWS documentation (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/https-singleinstance.html) as well as the files for Node application (https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/https-singleinstance-nodejs.html). The only difference in the last step is that I did not create a .ebextensions/https-instance.config file as I am pushing my code to GitHub and using CodePipeline to build my code. So, the https.conf and certificates were manually created and uploaded to the EC2 instance.
Also, I have checked my instance's inbound rules to ensure that 80 & 443 are open on the EB instance and for the associated security group.
proxy.conf
upstream nodejs {
server 127.0.0.1:5000;
keepalive 256;
}
server {
listen 8080;
if ($time_iso8601 ~ "^(\d{4})-(\d{2})-(\d{2})T(\d{2})") {
set $year $1;
set $month $2;
set $day $3;
set $hour $4;
}
access_log /var/log/nginx/healthd/application.log.$year-$month-$day-$hour healthd;
access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log main;
location / {
proxy_pass http://nodejs;
proxy_set_header Connection "";
proxy_http_version 1.1;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
}
gzip on;
gzip_comp_level 4;
gzip_types text/html text/plain text/css application/json application/x-javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript;
location /static {
alias /var/app/current/client/build/static;
}
}
https.conf
# HTTPS server
server {
listen 443 ssl;
server_name localhost;
ssl_certificate /etc/pki/tls/certs/server.crt;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/pki/tls/certs/server.key;
ssl_session_timeout 5m;
ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
# For enhanced health reporting support, uncomment this block:
#if ($time_iso8601 ~ "^(\d{4})-(\d{2})-(\d{2})T(\d{2})") {
# set $year $1;
# set $month $2;
# set $day $3;
# set $hour $4;
#}
#access_log /var/log/nginx/healthd/application.log.$year-$month-$day-$hour healthd;
#access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log main;
location / {
proxy_pass http://nodejs;
proxy_set_header Connection "";
proxy_http_version 1.1;
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 https;
}
}

Answer 1

So after rereading the AWS documentation for what felt like the hundredth time, I was finally able to resolve my issues. And because I wasn't strictly using the preferred method of using an .ebextensions folder, I had to fiddle with the Nginx proxy on the Elastic Beanstalk-created EC2 instance directly.
In short, I was missing the following section from my /etc/nginx/conf.d/proxy.conffile:
location / {
### START MISSING ###
set $redirect 0;
if ($http_x_forwarded_proto != "https") {
set $redirect 1;
}
if ($http_user_agent ~* "ELB-HealthChecker") {
set $redirect 0;
}
if ($redirect = 1) {
return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}
### END OF MISSING ###
proxy_pass http://nodejs;
proxy_set_header Connection "";
proxy_http_version 1.1;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
}
This documented here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/configuring-https-httpredirect.html
Specifically, This is a snippet from the NodeJS, default Nginx proxy config file: https://github.com/awsdocs/elastic-beanstalk-samples/blob/master/configuration-files/aws-provided/security-configuration/https-redirect/nodejs/https-redirect-nodejs.config