Nginx multiple roots

Question

I'd like to divert off requests to a particular sub-directory, to another root location. How? My existing block is:

server {
    listen       80;
    server_name  www.domain.com;

    location / {
        root   /home/me/Documents/site1;
        index  index.html;
    }

    location /petproject {
        root   /home/me/pet-Project/website;
        index  index.html;
        rewrite ^/petproject(.*)$ /$1;
    }

    # redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html
    #
    error_page   500 502 503 504  /50x.html;
    location = /50x.html {
        root   /usr/share/nginx/html;
    } }

That is, http://www.domain.com should serve /home/me/Documents/site1/index.html whereas http://www.domain.com/petproject should serve /home/me/pet-Project/website/index.html -- it seems that nginx re-runs all the rules after the replacement, and http://www.domain.com/petproject just serves /home/me/Documents/site1/index.html .

score 30 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 22 '15 at 09:52

30

The configuration has the usual problem that generally happens with nginx. That is, using root directive inside location block.

Try using this configuration instead of your current location blocks:

root /home/me/Documents/site1;
index index.html;

location /petproject {
    alias /home/me/pet-Project/website;
}

This means that the default directory for your website is /home/me/Documents/site1, and for /petproject URI, the content is served from /home/me/pet-Project/website directory.

answered Apr 22 '15 at 09:52

Tero Kilkanen

34,499
3
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what is the usual problem you refer to and why is alias better? the nginx docs give an example using two roots – dcsan Jul 11 '20 at 22:10
2

The usual problem is that people don't realize how `root` and `location` blocks interact. With `root` directive, nginx appends the path after `location` block to the `root` dir to get the full filesystem path to the file. Therefore, if the path specified in `location` does not exist in the directory specified by `root`, something unexpected to the user happens. – Tero Kilkanen Jul 12 '20 at 06:45

score 4 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 22 '15 at 07:52

4

You need the break flag added to the rewrite rule, so that processing stops, and as this is inside a location block processing will continue inside that block:

rewrite ^/petproject/?(.*)$ /$1 break;

Note I also added /? to the matching pattern so that you don't end up with double slashes at the beginning of the url.

answered Apr 22 '15 at 07:52

wurtel

3,806
12
15

The rewriting isn't needed here at all when `alias` directive is used like it should be used here. – Tero Kilkanen Apr 22 '15 at 09:53

Nginx multiple roots

2 Answers2