500 error with Nginx and WordPress pretty permalinks

Question

Ran into a 500 issue when running Nginx and WP together and setting pretty permalinks. I've been trying a bunch of different methods from Google but none seems to help.

Config -

server {
        listen   80;

        root /var/www/mydomain.com/public_html;
        index index.php index.html index.htm;

        server_name .mydomain.com;

        location / {
            try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
        }

        location ~ \.php$ {
                try_files $uri =404;
                fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
                fastcgi_index index.php;
                include fastcgi_params;

        }
}

All files load perfectly well, and the pages work if using the default permalinks setting. Strange thing is, if I check the network log I first see a 200 OK being received, then immediately followed by a 500. Any ideas?

Edit: Setting to close as I'm switching to Apache instead. Will mark correct answer as it seems to have helped others.

Answer 1

try:

try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?q=$uri&$args;

AND:

fastcgi_index /index.php;

(note the / )