How to Change / Remove Server Name Header In Nginx On Ubuntu Linux

01 Jun 2021 • 2 min read

NginX, is a popular cross platform opensource web server that can also be used as a reverse proxy, load balancer, mail proxy and HTTP cache. The software was created by Igor Sysoev and publicly released in 2004.A large fraction of web servers use NGINX, often as a load balancer.

In this post we are going to discuss how we can change / remove Server header from the HTTP response sent by nginx setup (on Ubunut) by changing the configuration.

Generally we will get server name and version along with the response like the one shown below.. Nginx Response Headers

Now we will see

How to remove nginx version from server header
How to remove the server header altogether
How to change or set custom server name to server header in the nginx

Removing nginx version from server header

Go to nginx config folder (cd /etc/nginx/) and open the configuration file (nginx.conf)
Add server_tokens off; under http section.
Restart Nginx webserver (sudo systemctl restart nginx)
Now verify the response you will see only server name not the version of nginx.

Removing server header from response

Install nginx extras module with the following command sudo apt install nginx-extras
Go to nginx config folder (cd /etc/nginx/) and open the configuration file (nginx.conf)
Add more_clear_headers Server; under http section.
Restart Nginx webserver (sudo systemctl restart nginx)
Now verify the response you will not see server header.

Setting custom server name to the server header

Install nginx extras module with the following command sudo apt install nginx-extras
Go to nginx config folder (cd /etc/nginx/) and open the configuration file (nginx.conf)
Add more_set_headers 'Server: MyServer'; under http section.
Here MyServer can be any custom string without any special characters (Spaces and numbers are allowed).
Restart Nginx webserver (sudo systemctl restart nginx)
Now verify the response you will see server header with custom value