Nginx location directive doesn't seem to be working. Am I missing something?

Question

I've set up Nginx as my main web server and have two Mochiweb based servers behind it. Certain requests are reverse-proxied to these two servers. now, I want to access phpmyadmin (located at /var/www/nginx-default/phpMyAdmin) using nginx, but it keeps saying Error 404 not found. Am I missing something obvious here?

server {
    ############### General Settings ####################
    listen   80;
    server_name  localhost;
    access_log  /home/me/dev/wwwaccess.log;

    ############## Document Root #######################    
    location / {
        root   /home/me/dev;
        index  index.html index.htm index.php;
    }

    ############## PHPMyAdmin #######################   
    location /phpmyadmin {
        root   /var/www/nginx-default/phpMyAdmin;
        index  index.html index.htm index.php;
    }

    ############## Proxy Settings for FastCGI Server #####
    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
        fastcgi_index  index.php;
        fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  /home/me/dev$fastcgi_script_name;
        include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
    }


    ############# Proxy Settings for Mochi1 ###############
    location /mochi1 {
            proxy_pass         http://127.0.0.1:8000;
            proxy_redirect     off;

            proxy_set_header   Host             $host;
            proxy_set_header   X-Real-IP        $remote_addr;
            proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-For  $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;

            client_max_body_size       10m;
            client_body_buffer_size    128k;

            proxy_connect_timeout      90;
            proxy_send_timeout         90;
            proxy_read_timeout         3600;

            proxy_buffering off;
        }

    ############# Proxy Settings for Mochi2 ###############
    location /mochi2 {
            proxy_pass         http://127.0.0.1:8001;
            proxy_redirect     off;

            proxy_set_header   Host             $host;
            proxy_set_header   X-Real-IP        $remote_addr;
            proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-For  $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;

            client_max_body_size       10m;
            client_body_buffer_size    128k;

            proxy_connect_timeout      90;
            proxy_send_timeout         90;
            proxy_read_timeout         3600;

            proxy_buffering off;
        }

    ############# Error redirection pages ################
    error_page   500 502 503 504  /50x.html;
    location = /50x.html {
        root   /home/me/dev;
    }
}

Answer 1

The problem here is that only the "best" location directive gets taken, in this order:

location =  <path>  (longest match wins)
location ^~ <path>  (longest match wins)
location ~  <path>  (first defined match wins)
location    <path>  (longest match wins)

Using this ruleset, your /phpmyadmin location directive is beaten out by the regular expression ".php$" location directive, so the former is ignored entirely. Additionally, your php fastcgi directive is hard-wired to your /home/me/dev directory, which means that phpMyAdmin is totally inaccessible. You can use a rewrite to get the correct root for your phpMyAdmin scripts:

location ~ \.php$ {
    set $php_root /home/me/dev;
    if ($request_uri ~* /phpmyadmin) {
        set $php_root /var/www/nginx-default/phpMyAdmin;
    }

    fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
    fastcgi_index  index.php;
    fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  $php_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
}

Answer 2

Set the 'root' directly. Less directives, less computing needed to set more vars. There are also other things (like fastcgi_param DOCUMENT_ROOT) that will not be set correctly in the currently accepted answer. This method will handle all that however:

location ~ \.php$ {
    if ($request_uri ~* /phpmyadmin) {
        root /var/www/nginx-default/phpMyAdmin;
    }

    fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
    fastcgi_index  index.php;
    include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
}

Answer 3

I struggled with this for hours now and none of the solutions discussed above worked to my case (since i needed to run index.php, index.php with arguments, and other php scripts than index.php), but finally reached the working configurations as the following:

    location /php-app {
    passenger_enabled off;
    alias /path/to/php-app/$1;
    index index.php index.html;
    try_files $uri $uri/ @rewrite;
   }

   location @rewrite {
    rewrite ^/php-app(.*)$ /index.php?q=$1 last;
   }

location ~ \.php$ {
    alias /path/to/php-app/$1;
    rewrite ^/php-app(.*)$ $1 last;
    passenger_enabled off;
    fastcgi_pass unix:/tmp/php-fpm.socket;
    fastcgi_index index.php;
    include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /path/to/php-app$fastcgi_script_name;
    fastcgi_intercept_errors on;
    }

Answer 4

Perhaps it searches for index.html? Try changing to

location /phpmyadmin {
    root   /var/www/nginx-default/phpMyAdmin;
    index index.php;
}

and add section below, to avoid case-related issues

location /phpMyAdmin {
   rewrite ^/* /phpmyadmin last;
}

Answer 5

Here a practical example of a configuration to serve two diferent folders, one protected and other not protected.

Nginx is serving two folders: /usr/share/nginx/html/ at http:yourhost:port/ (protected with htpasswd) /usr/share/nginx/static/ at http:yourhost:port/health/ (open to allow heath monitoring)

    location / {
        root   /usr/share/nginx/html/;
        index  index.html index.htm;
        auth_basic           "Administrator’s Area";
        auth_basic_user_file /etc/nginx/.htpasswd;
    }

    location ^~ /health/ {
        root   /usr/share/nginx/static;
        index  index.html index.htm;
    }