Rewrite root address to a subdirectory in nginx

Question

I'm converting my mediawiki site to use nginx as a frontend for static files with apache on the backend for php. I've gotten everything working so far except for when I view the root directory "example.com" it tries to serve a directory listing and gives a 403 error since I have that disabled and don't have an index file there.

The apache rewrite rule I have in place right now is simply:

RewriteRule ^$ /wiki/Main_Page [L]

I tried something similar with a location directive in nginx, but it's not working:

location = / {
    rewrite "^$" /wiki/Main_Page;
}

The rest of my location directives are:

location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ @rewrite;
}

location @rewrite {
    rewrite ^/wiki/(.*)$ /w/index.php?title=$1&$args;
}

location ~* \.(js|css|png|jpg|jpeg|gif|ico)$ {
    try_files $uri /w/index.php?title=$1&$args;
    expires max;
    log_not_found off;
}

location ~ \.php?$ {
    proxy_set_header X-Real-IP  $remote_addr;
    proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr;
    proxy_set_header Host $host;
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;
}

I can simply put an index.php file with header('Location:') in it, but I'd rather just do it properly with a rewrite rule.

All the examples I've found online for running mediawiki with nginx run the wiki as wiki.example.com instead of a /wiki/ subdirectory.

Edit: I also tried adding to the try_files like this: try_files $uri $uri/ @rewrite /wiki/Main_Page; with the same 403 error result.

Kadaan Kadaan · Accepted Answer · 2013-07-19T05:26:04

I found help in the nginx irc chat.

Basically what I needed to do was use a return instead of rewrite. So I changed this:

location = / {
    rewrite "^$" /wiki/Main_Page;
}

to this:

location = / {
    return 301 http://www.example.com/wiki/Main_Page;
}

Rewrite root address to a subdirectory in nginx

7 Answers