Why does nginx prefixes the location context path to the root location

nginx

I have a simple default website configuration located in my "sites-available" folder in nginx that looks like the one below.

When I try browse to /hello I'd expect it to serve the index.html file located in the root folder I specified. Instead, it is trying to get /hello/index.html within the root location I specified.

Is there a way to tell nginx to serve the files without prefixing the context path?

root /var/...;

location / {
    ...
}

location /hello/ {
    root /home/vagrant/public_html/project/dist;
}

Best Answer

Use alias instead of root; quoting http://nginx.org/en/docs/http/ngx_http_core_module.html#alias

For example, with the following configuration

location /i/ {
    alias /data/w3/images/;
}

on request of “/i/top.gif”, the file /data/w3/images/top.gif will be sent.

Related Solutions

Nginx – Why Does Nginx Start Process as Root?

The process you noticed is the master process, the process that starts all other nginx processes. This process is started by the init script that starts nginx. The reason this process is running as root is simply because you started it as root! You can start it as another user, but you will have to make sure that all resources nginx needs are available to this user. That would typically be at least /var/log/nginx and the pid-file under /var/run/.

Most importantly; Only root processes can listen to ports below 1024. A webserver typically runs at port 80 and/or 443. That means it needs to be started as root.

In conclusion, the master process being run by root is completely normal and in most cases necessary for normal operation.

Edit: Running anything as root carries an implicit security risk. Normally developers of this kind of software have much knowledge about attack vectors and take great care to execute as little as possible as root. In the end you simply have to trust that the software is of good quality.

If you still feel uneasy there is a way to run nginx as another user and still use ports below 1024. You can use iptables to redirect all incoming traffic on port 80 to another port, for example 8080, and have nginx listen on that port.

Nginx location ~ /\.ht

location ~ /\.ht {
    deny all;
}

This directive tells the webserver to deny all incoming requests for any files starting with .ht in the root directory (/).

The tilde ~ tells nginx to use regular expressions.

Thus, files like .htaccess, .htpasswd, etc, will not be served.

Note: The backslash (\) before the dot, is just to escape the dot (the dot that comes before htaccess, htpassword, etc.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Nginx – Why Does Nginx Start Process as Root?

Nginx location ~ /\.ht

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