Nginx keeps returning 413 despite setting client_max_body

I am running a NodeJS app behind nginx reverse proxy. When I POST large requests, I get HTTP 413 entity too large error. However, I've tried setting the client_max_body_size to 1000M at every level of my nginx config and I'm still getting the error. Yes, I restarted nginx several times and tried setting the max size in several locations, but it didn't help.

I only have 2 nginx configs - the main one, and the virtual host one, both of which I included below.

Here is the error I receive:

{'message': 'request entity too large', 'error': {'message': 'request entity too large', 'expected': 107707, 'length': 107707, 'limit': 102400, 'type': 'entity.too.large'}, 'title': 'Error'}

Here is my main config:

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;
        tcp_nodelay on;
        keepalive_timeout 65;
        types_hash_max_size 2048;

        # server_tokens off;

        # server_names_hash_bucket_size 64;
        # server_name_in_redirect off;
        client_max_body_size 1000M;

        include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
        default_type application/octet-stream;

        ##
        # SSL Settings
        ##
        ssl_session_timeout 1d;
        ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:1m;
        ssl_session_tickets off;
        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;
        ssl_prefer_server_ciphers off;
        # OCSP stapling
        ssl_stapling on;
        ssl_stapling_verify on;
        # Cloudflare OCSP DNS resolvers
        resolver 1.1.1.1 1.0.0.1;

        ##
        # Logging Settings
        ##

        access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
        error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;

        ##
        # Gzip Settings
        ##

        gzip on;

        # 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/*;
}

Here is my virtual host config:

server {
    listen 443 ssl http2;
    server_name example.com;
    client_max_body_size 1000M;
    # ssl certificates
    ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem;
    ssl_trusted_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/chain.pem;
    # Strict Transport Security (HSTS)
    add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=63072000" always;

    location / {
        root /var/www/example;
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;
    }

    location /api {
        client_max_body_size 1000M;
        proxy_pass http://localhost:3000;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
    }
}

CodePudding user response：

Turns out this was actually related to NodeJS Express settings. I updated the following lines in my app.js file to include the limit and this fixed the issue:

app.use(express.json({ limit: "1000mb", extended: true }));
app.use(express.urlencoded({ limit: "1000mb", extended: true }));