How do you change the server header returned by nginx?

Like Apache, this is a quick edit to the source and recompile. From Calomel.org:

The Server: string is the header which is sent back to the client to tell them what type of http server you are running and possibly what version. This string is used by places like Alexia and Netcraft to collect statistics about how many and of what type of web server are live on the Internet. To support the author and statistics for Nginx we recommend keeping this string as is. But, for security you may not want people to know what you are running and you can change this in the source code. Edit the source file src/http/ngx_http_header_filter_module.c at look at lines 48 and 49. You can change the String to anything you want.

## vi src/http/ngx_http_header_filter_module.c (lines 48 and 49)
static char ngx_http_server_string[] = "Server: MyDomain.com" CRLF;
static char ngx_http_server_full_string[] = "Server: MyDomain.com" CRLF;

March 2011 edit: Props to Flavius below for pointing out a new option, replacing Nginx's standard HttpHeadersModule with the forked HttpHeadersMoreModule. Recompiling the standard module is still the quick fix, and makes sense if you want to use the standard module and won't be changing the server string often. But if you want more than that, the HttpHeadersMoreModule is a strong project and lets you do all sorts of runtime black magic with your HTTP headers.

There is a special module: http://wiki.nginx.org/NginxHttpHeadersMoreModule

This module allows you to add, set, or clear any output or input header that you specify.

This is an enhanced version of the standard headers module because it provides more utilities like resetting or clearing "builtin headers" like Content-Type, Content-Length, and Server.

It also allows you to specify an optional HTTP status code criteria using the -s option and an optional content type criteria using the -t option while modifying the output headers with the more_set_headers and more_clear_headers directives...

According to nginx documentation it supports custom values or even the exclusion:

Syntax: server_tokens on | off | build | string;

but sadly only with a commercial subscription:

Additionally, as part of our commercial subscription, starting from version 1.9.13 the signature on error pages and the “Server” response header field value can be set explicitly using the string with variables. An empty string disables the emission of the “Server” field.

After I read Parthian Shot's answer, I dig into /usr/sbin/nginx binary file. Then I found out that the file contains these three lines.

Server: nginx/1.12.2
Server: nginx/1.12.2
Server: nginx

Basically first two of them are meant for server_tokens on; directive (Server version included). Then I change the search criteria to match those lines within the binary file.

sed -i 's/Server: nginx/Server: thing/' `which nginx`

After I dig farther I found out that the error message produced by nginx is also included in this file.

<hr><center>nginx</center>

There are three of them, one without the version, two of them included the version. So I run the following command to replace nginx string within the error message.

sed -i 's/center>nginx/center>thing/' `which nginx`

The only way is to modify the file src/http/ngx_http_header_filter_module.c . I changed nginx on line 48 to a different string.

What you can do in the nginx config file is to set server_tokens to off. This will prevent nginx from printing the version number.

To check things out, try curl -I http://vurbu.com/ | grep Server

It should return

Server: Hai

I know the post is kinda old, but I have found a solution easy that works on Debian based distribution without compiling nginx from source.

First install nginx-extras package

sudo apt install nginx-extras

Then load the nginx http headers more module by editing nginx.conf and adding the following line inside the server block

load_module modules/ngx_http_headers_more_filter_module.so;

Once it's done you'll have access to both more_set_headers and more_clear_headers directives.

Nginx-extra package is deprecated now.

The following therefore did now work for me as i tried installing various packages more_set_headers 'Server: My Very Own Server';

You can just do the following and no server or version information will be sent back

    server_tokens '';

if you just want to remove the version number this works

   server_tokens off;

Expanding on Parthian Shot's answer, you can actually replace the whole header and not only the value as long as the total length is the same:

sed -i 's/Server: nginx/My-Header: hi/' `which nginx`

Are you asking about the Server header value in the response? You can try changing that with an add_header directive, but I'm not sure if it'll work. http://wiki.codemongers.com/NginxHttpHeadersModule