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; }