Resolving errors encountered when using NGINX Proxy Manager with MFT

Troubleshooting

When the MetaDefender Managed File Transfer (MFT) server is configured and accessed through NGINX / NGINX Proxy Manager, user might encounter this error:

Inspecting the headers of a transfer_file request, you may notice several custom headers used by MFT, such as File_name, File_size, Group_id, and Transfer_method.

However, by default, NGINX ignores non-standard headers like these, as it only processes standardized HTTP headers unless explicitly configured to allow them. To ensure that MFT functions correctly, you may need to modify the NGINX configuration to pass these custom headers through.

The headers used by MFT

How to fix the issue:

1. Open the NPM Dashboard.
2. Navigate to Proxy Hosts and select the desired proxy host.
3. Go to the Advanced Settings section.
4. Add one of the following directives:

underscores_in_headers on;

This directive allows NGINX to process headers containing underscores, which MFT utilizes.

ignore_invalid_headers off;

This directive ensures that NGINX includes all headers, even those considered invalid by default.

For more details, please refer to the official NGINX documentation: Module ngx_http_core_module