nginx directory ip restriction not working

Question

I'm trying to restrict my phpmyadmin directory to only be allowed by my IP from home. This is a remote VPS not on my network:

location ^~ /9ZXyNSDVTM7yExN/ {  #this is the phpmyadmin directory (I renamed it)
        allow 127.10.176.5;       #This is my IP
        deny all;
}

My problem is, it gives me a 404 error when I go to the page. The weird thing is, if I change the IP in the code above to an random IP that is NOT mine, it then gives a 403 Forbidden error instead of a 404 error.

I don't get a 404 error if I remove this whole location block. Why is this restriction block not working?

Also, here is my whole nginx.conf:

#user html;
worker_processes  1;

#error_log  logs/error.log;
#error_log  logs/error.log  notice;
#error_log  logs/error.log  info;

#pid        logs/nginx.pid;


events {
    worker_connections  1024;
}


http {
    include       mime.types;
    default_type  application/octet-stream;

    #log_format  main  '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
    #                  '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
    #                  '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';

    #access_log  logs/access.log  main;

    sendfile        on;
    #tcp_nopush     on;

    #keepalive_timeout  0;
    keepalive_timeout  65;

    #gzip  on;

    server {
        listen       80;
        server_name  localhost;

        #charset koi8-r;

        #access_log  logs/host.access.log  main;

        location / {
            root   /srv/http;
            index  index.php;
#       try_files $uri.html $uri/ =404; 
       }

        #error_page  404              /404.html;

        # redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html
        #
        error_page   500 502 503 504  /50x.html;
        location = /50x.html {
            root   /usr/share/nginx/html;
        }

        # proxy the PHP scripts to Apache listening on 127.0.0.1:80
        #
        #location ~ \.php$ {
        #    proxy_pass   http://127.0.0.1;
        #}

        # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
        #
        #location ~ \.php$ {
        #    root           html;
        #    fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
        #    fastcgi_index  index.php;
        #    fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  /scripts$fastcgi_script_name;
        #    include        fastcgi_params;
        #}

        # deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root
        # concurs with nginx's one
        #
        #location ~ /\.ht {
        #    deny  all;
        #}
    location ^~ /9ZXyNSDVTM7yExN/ {
        allow 127.10.176.5;
        deny all;
    }



        location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php-fpm/php-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        root /srv/http;
        include fastcgi.conf;
       }


    # another virtual host using mix of IP-, name-, and port-based configuration
    #
    #server {
    #    listen       8000;
    #    listen       somename:8080;
    #    server_name  somename  alias  another.alias;

    #    location / {
    #        root   html;
    #        index  index.html index.htm;
    #    }
    #}


    # HTTPS server
    #
    #server {
    #    listen       443;
    #    server_name  localhost;

    #    ssl                  on;
    #    ssl_certificate      cert.pem;
    #    ssl_certificate_key  cert.key;

    #    ssl_session_timeout  5m;

    #    ssl_protocols  SSLv2 SSLv3 TLSv1;
    #    ssl_ciphers  HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5;
    #    ssl_prefer_server_ciphers   on;

    #    location / {
    #        root   html;
    #        index  index.html index.htm;
    #    }
    #}
}
}

Answer 1

Add root and index to the location ^~ /9ZXyNSDVTM7yExN/. The allow/deny works, it just doesn't know what to show.

And be careful with the matching order. Check if by any chance requesting /9ZXyNSDVTM7yExN/index.php doesn't fall into the \.php$ location that doesn't have allow/deny.

Hope it helps.