Nginx only shows welcome page

Question

I'm trying to set up a simple virtual host, serving only static files. Trouble is, directing the browser to (in this case) jorum.dev displays the default nginx welcome page, as opposed to jorum.dev/index.html.

Nginx was installed using Homebrew on Mac OS X Mountain Lion.

hosts

127.0.0.1       jorum.dev 

jorum.dev

server {     listen          80;     server_name     jorum.dev;      location / {         root        ~/Sites/jorum;         index       index.html index.htm;     } } 

nginx.conf

worker_processes  1;  events {     worker_connections  1024; }  http {     include       mime.types;     default_type  application/octet-stream;      sendfile        on;      gzip            on;     gzip_disable    "msie6";     gzip_min_length 1100;     gzip_vary       on;     gzip_proxied    any;     gzip_buffers    16 8k;     gzip_types      text/plain text/css application/json application/x-javascript text/xml application/xml application/rss+xml text/javascript image/svg+xml application/x-font-ttf font/opentype application/vnd.ms-fontobject;      server_tokens off;      client_max_body_size    4096k;     client_header_timeout   10;     client_body_timeout     10;     keepalive_timeout       10 10;     send_timeout            10;      server {         listen       80;         server_name  localhost;          location / {             root   html;             index  index.html index.htm;         }          #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   html;         }     } } 

Answer 1

the debian/ubuntu nginx package comes with a default sites-available that takes over the default host dispatch. Simply remove the default link and it should load your site instead.

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another gotcha, the debian/ubuntu nginx package also comes with a default index value for the default server in the default site that reads:

index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html; 

I've had the file index.nginx-debian.html show up in my www root directory, which took precedence over the cgi locations.

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nginx has a verbose test mode that can be used to dump the entire configuration as parsed by nginx, which you can sanity check against your expectations.

nginx -T 

Answer 2

Missing includes in nginx.conf

include /usr/local/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*; 

http://wiki.nginx.org/CoreModule#include