EDR: Nginx Fails to Start With Error "unknown "sensor_mod_idx" variable"

Products

• Carbon Black EDR (formerly Cb Response)

Issue/Introduction

NGINX fails to start and /var/log/cb/nginx/startup.log shows the error

nginx: [emerg] unknown "sensor_mod_idx" variable

Environment

• EDR: All Supported Versions

Cause

This can happen if there is an issue with the cb.conf file in /etc/cb/nginx/conf.d/ directory

Resolution

A default cb.conf file may look like this

###############################################################################
#
# /etc/cb/nginx/conf.d/cb.conf:
#     VMware Carbon Black EDR HTTP Server Nginx configuration file
#
###############################################################################
#
# This file contains several properties whose values are determined dynamically
# at runtime when cb-nginx service is started based on current settings in
# /etc/cb/cb.conf.  These properties are imported via an 'include' directive
# which references a runtime properties file which has the following naming
# convention: "/var/cb/nginx/props/nginx.runtime.<property name>.prop"
#
# If nginx configuration must be modified in order to add additional 'location'
# blocks (or other configuration within 'server' block), it is strongly
# recommended that instead of directly modifying this file, you add such
# changes to /etc/cb/nginx/conf.d/cb.server.custom file. Doing so will ensure
# that any changes, that are made to this configuration file by future version
# of cb-enterprise package, will get applied automatically without generating
# .rpmnew files which would require manual consolidation of differences
#
###############################################################################

server
{
    # IMPORTANT: If listener configuration is updated here, make sure to
    # also upate corresponding Nginx#### parameters in /etc/cb/cb.conf file
    listen [::]:443 ssl ipv6only=off;

    include /etc/cb/nginx/conf.d/includes/cb.server.body;
    include /etc/cb/nginx/conf.d/includes/cb.server.api;
    include /etc/cb/nginx/conf.d/includes/cb.server.sensor;

    # Include content of custom server configuration file
    include /etc/cb/nginx/conf.d/includes/cb.server.custom;
}