Nginx unknown directive "if"

Question

On my Nginx server, in order to save time, I made etc/nginx/include.conf and put this line in etc/nginx/sites-available/site1.conf:

location / {
    include /etc/nginx/include.conf;
    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?page=$uri;
}

The content of include.conf :

if ($http_referer ~* (badreferers)) { 
        return 403; 
}

When testing the conf file, this error emerges: [emerg] unknown directive "if" in /etc/nginx/include.conf:1

When I put the if statement directly in etc/nginx/sites-available/site1.conf, it doesn't give an error.

What could be wrong here?

Update: nginx -V gives:

nginx version: nginx/1.4.6 (Ubuntu) built by gcc 4.8.4 (Ubuntu 4.8.4-2ubuntu1~14.04.3) TLS SNI support enabled configure arguments: --with-cc-opt='-g -O2 -fstack-protector --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -Wformat -Werror=format-security -D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2' --with-ld-opt='-Wl,-Bsymbolic-functions -Wl,-z,relro' --prefix=/usr/share/nginx --conf-path=/etc/nginx/nginx.conf --http-log-path=/var/log/nginx/access.log --error-log-path=/var/log/nginx/error.log --lock-path=/var/lock/nginx.lock --pid-path=/run/nginx.pid --http-client-body-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/body --http-fastcgi-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/fastcgi --http-proxy-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/proxy --http-scgi-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/scgi --http-uwsgi-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/uwsgi --with-debug --with-pcre-jit --with-ipv6 --with-http_ssl_module --with-http_stub_status_module --with-http_realip_module --with-http_addition_module --with-http_dav_module --with-http_geoip_module --with-http_gzip_static_module --with-http_image_filter_module --with-http_spdy_module --with-http_sub_module --with-http_xslt_module --with-mail --with-mail_ssl_module

it may be spacemark-sensitive, so try to remove extra ones. if ($http_referer ~* ...) — Deadooshka
hi, thanks for the suggestion, it doesn't change the problem when testing this. — C.A. Vuyk
@C.A.Vuyk did you check stackoverflow.com/questions/19165976/… this thread solutions for bad characters? — user5890979
@C.A.Vuyk did you compile nginx by yourself, or it's from an OS distro/repo or some other ready compiled sources? Please update your question and include the output of nginx -V. — Christos Lytras

Alexander Ushakov Alexander Ushakov · Accepted Answer · 2017-03-12T09:32:13

You use old nginx version 1.4. On modern 1.10.2 your config works fine.

I've checked the sources of nginx. The "include" directive isn't just replaced with content of included file. It is processed differently depending on context. So there are definitely some restrictions of what you may put in included file. At least in your nginx version. As nginx documentation says

Included files should consist of syntactically correct directives and blocks.

Nginx unknown directive "if"

3 Answers