nginx: multiple document roots with fastcgi

Question

When using a single document root in my http directive, everything works fine. However, I want to add a location directive with an additional directive and I can't get fastcgi to work with this additional root (I receive a white page when accessing http://localhost/sqlbuddy).

Here's an excerpt of my nginx.conf:

server {

root /home/tman/dev/project/trunk/data;
index index.php;

location /sqlbuddy {
    root /srv/http;
    index index.php;
}

location ~* \.php {
    fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
    include fastcgi.conf;
}
}

And my fastcgi.conf:

fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME    $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param  QUERY_STRING       $query_string;
fastcgi_param  REQUEST_METHOD     $request_method;
fastcgi_param  CONTENT_TYPE       $content_type;
fastcgi_param  CONTENT_LENGTH     $content_length;

fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_NAME        $fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param  REQUEST_URI        $request_uri;
fastcgi_param  DOCUMENT_URI       $document_uri;
fastcgi_param  DOCUMENT_ROOT      $document_root;
fastcgi_param  SERVER_PROTOCOL    $server_protocol;

fastcgi_param  GATEWAY_INTERFACE  CGI/1.1;
fastcgi_param  SERVER_SOFTWARE    nginx/$nginx_version;

fastcgi_param  REMOTE_ADDR        $remote_addr;
fastcgi_param  REMOTE_PORT        $remote_port;
fastcgi_param  SERVER_ADDR        $server_addr;
fastcgi_param  SERVER_PORT        $server_port;
fastcgi_param  SERVER_NAME        $server_name;

# PHP only, required if PHP was built with --enable-force-cgi-redirect
fastcgi_param  REDIRECT_STATUS    200;

Both nginx's error.log and php-fpm's log don't show any errors about it. I'd prefer not to put everything in the same document root.

Solution 1

When you change roots, you need to set up a second location to pass to php:

server {
  root /home/tman/dev/project/trunk/data;
  index index.php;

  # Use location ^~ to prevent regex locations from stealing requests
  location ^~ /sqlbuddy {
    root /srv/http;

    # This location will handle requests containing .php within /sqlbuddy
    # and will use the root set just above
    location ~* \.php {
      include fastcgi.conf;
      fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
    }
  }

  location ~* \.php {
    include fastcgi.conf;
    fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
  }
}

Also, unless you're using path info-style urls like /index.php/foo/bar, you probably want to change .php to .php$ to anchor the match at the end of the uri.

Solution 2

The reason for this is Nginx will choose the "best" location block:

• http://wiki.nginx.org/HttpCoreModule#location
• http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/request_processing.html

Correct me if I'm wrong. Currently, Nginx doesn't support global setting for fastcgi. So, either you must re-define the fastcgi_pass:

    location /sqlbuddy {
        root /srv/http;
        index index.php;
    }
    location /sqlbuddy/.+\.php$ {
        fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
        include fastcgi.conf;
    }

or you can check the $request_uri with if directive in the second location:

    location ~ \.php$ {
        if ($request_uri ~ /sqlbuddy/.*$) {
            root /srv/http;
        }
        fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
        include fastcgi.conf;
    }

Comments

[Greg Petersen]

Please leave a comment to let me know why you down vote?

[tman]

I think you're answer is valid, but it didn't work for me (/sqlbuddy still served a white page). I think this is because it doesn't use ^~. in the location directive. kolbyjack's nested location directive solution worked fine for me though. Sorry I can't upvote this (not enough reputation yet).

[DanO]

The second solution worked perfectly for me. Especially if you use a PHP framework like Kohana with try_files!

[bufh]

Thank you kolbyjack, your solution is clean and elegant.

[berkus]

Thanks, in my case with rewrites the trick with if inside fastcgi location helped!