How to get Nginx alias working?

Question

I have this defining an alias (latest iteration of it):

location ~ /xxx/(.*).php($|/) {
    fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
    fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
    fastcgi_index index.php;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /xxx/web/blog/xxx/$1.php;
    include fastcgi_params;
}

location ~ /xxx(.*) {
     autoindex on;
     alias /xxx/web/blog/xxx$1;
}

To try and define a wordpress install within the directory of xxx of xxx.com (for example).

Now when I take out the PHP path I get the index.php file downloaded to my computer but as soon as I add PHP fpm, as defined by the php location, I get:

FastCGI sent in stderr: "Primary script unknown" while reading response header from upstream

In the logs. I have tried debug mode in error logs but it all looks good.

I do have a php location already doing:

location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
        try_files $uri =404;

#       # NOTE: You should have "cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0;" in php.ini
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /xxx/web/live/backend/web/$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
}

I have checked the output of /xxx/web/blog/xxx/$1.php using return 200 "/xxx/web/blog/xxx/$1.php"; and it looks perfect.

I should add that I have been searhcing on SE for about 3 hours and not a single post on this actually solved my problems yet, including:

So why won't this work?

Sammaye · Answer 1 · 2014-09-08T11:22:13.760

Ok so I decided to go back to basics here and I drilled my code down to:

location /xxx {
    autoindex on;
    alias /xxx/web/blog/xxx;

    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }
}

And I have no idea why but it works, I am fairly cetain I already tried something very close to this.

I thought it was because I added: try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args; but then I removed that and it still worked.

If someone can explain how aliases and PHP within them works a bit better and why it wouldn't work for me then I would accept that answer since that is effectively the question.

How to get Nginx alias working?

1 Answers1