Nginx config file overwritten during Elastic Beanstalk deployment?

After spending almost entire day and trying out all the possible solutions, as of July 17, 2017, the above solution does not work. For me, I wanted to replace /etc/nginx/conf.d/elasticbeanstalk/00_application.conf I created the below shown folder structure in my .ebextension folder and the file was overwritten with my content. This solution also worked for nginx.conf which is located in /etc/nginx folder

It seems that Elastic Beanstalk has changed and the commonly recommended approach/hack of overwriting #etc#nginx#conf.d#00_elastic_beanstalk_proxy.conf doesn't work any more. Nor does creating any file in /tmp/deployment/config.

The solution I found was to overwrite /etc/nginx/conf.d/00_elastic_beanstalk_proxy.conf directly, using a container_commands directive, since these commands are executed after the Elastic Beanstalk install creates it's version of the nginx config.

From http://docs.aws.amazon.com/elasticbeanstalk/latest/dg/customize-containers-ec2.html#linux-container-commands:

They [container_commands] run after the application and web server have been set up and the application version file has been extracted, but before the application version is deployed.

I did this in three steps within .ebextensions:

1. Create my version of the nginx config file.

2. Create a script to overwrite the standard config file with my own.

3. Run the script.

The first two steps happen earlier in the install process, while the last uses container_commands so as described previous happens late in the install.

Here's the files I used:

File .ebextensions/install_nginx_config_01.config:
(Note that the indenting is important)

#
#   STEP 1 - Create the nginx config file
#
files:

  "/tmp/my.nginx.conf" :
    mode: "000755"
    owner: root
    group: root
    content: |
      # This file was overwritten during deployment
      # by .ebextensions/install_nginx_config_03.config

      upstream nodejs {
          server 127.0.0.1:3000;
          keepalive 256;
      }

      server {
          listen 8080;

          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;
      }

File .ebextensions/install_nginx_config_02.config:

#
#   STEP 2 - Create a script that will overwrite the Nginx config
#
files:

  "/tmp/install-nginx-config.sh" :
    mode: "000755"
    owner: root
    group: root
    content: |
      #!/bin/sh
      cp /tmp/my.nginx.conf /tmp/deployment/config/#etc#nginx#conf.d#00_elastic_beanstalk_proxy.conf

File .ebextensions/install_nginx_config_03.config:

#
#   STEP 3 - Run the script to overwrite the nginx config template.
#
container_commands:

  01_runmyshellscript:
    command: "/tmp/install-nginx-config.sh"

As of this writing, the proper way to update/add values into the http config in the nginx.conf file without overwriting it is to add a .config file to the .ebextensions folder that looks like this:

files:
  "/etc/nginx/conf.d/custom_nginx.conf":
    content: |

      proxy_connect_timeout       600;
      proxy_send_timeout          600;
      proxy_read_timeout          600;
      send_timeout                600;

This creates a new file called custom_nginx.conf in the /etc/nginx/conf.d directory. Since the nginx.conf file contains

http {
  include       /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
}

when the server is started it will pull the 4 timeout vars from custom_nginx.conf into the http section of nginx.conf

As of August, 2020 for Ruby 2.6 running on 64bit Amazon Linux 2/3.1.0:

Placing nginx files in the .platform/nginx/ works for me.

Here is my folder structure: