nginx use subfolder and 'A record'

Question

I'm really stuck here, and could not find help in related posts and it's the first time I'm dealing with nginx. I have a 'Moodle' installation running with nginx on my Synology NAS and would like to access this from outside via a domain name, i.e. I do not want to use my public IP. I already have a domain (let's say mymoodle.com) and added an 'A Record' to this domain pointing to my Router's public IP. When I enter 'mymoodle.com' in my browser it points me to the root of the Synology web folder which in my case is here:

/var/services/web/

and contains the following:

index.html  moodle  phpMyAdmin  web_images

and my browser basically renders index.html, so my A record seems to work as expected, i.e. mymoodle.com points to the index.html in that folder. But I would like mymoodle.com to point to the moodle subfolder (which contains an index.php file).

I found the following nginx config file for Moodle:

/etc/nginx/conf.d/www.Moodle.conf

which looks like:

location ^~ /moodle {
    include proxy.conf;
    proxy_read_timeout 3600s;
    proxy_pass  http://127.0.0.1:914;
}

I tried a bunch of settings, but none seem to work. My last attempt looked like this:

server {
   server_name moodle.trucker.in;
   root /var/services/web/moodle;
}

but of course no success. The content of /etc/nginx/ looks like this

ash-4.3# ls -l /etc/nginx/
total 52
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   20 Oct  9 12:13 app.d -> /var/tmp/nginx/app.d
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   27 Oct  9 12:13 conf.d -> /usr/local/etc/nginx/conf.d
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1077 Jul 13 00:42 fastcgi.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1007 Jul 13 00:42 fastcgi_params
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2837 Jul 13 00:42 koi-utf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2223 Jul 13 00:42 koi-win
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3957 Jul 13 00:42 mime.types
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 9043 Oct 25 21:13 nginx.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3491 Jul 13 00:31 nginx.conf.default
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  277 Jul 13 00:31 proxy.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1204 Jul 13 00:42 scgi_params
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root   34 Oct  9 12:13 sites-enabled -> /usr/local/etc/nginx/sites-enabled
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  664 Jul 13 00:42 uwsgi_params
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3610 Jul 13 00:42 win-utf

Here is the nginx.conf file as requested:

worker_processes        auto;
#worker_cpu_affinity    auto;
worker_rlimit_nofile    65535;

include conf.d/main.conf;

events {
    use             epoll;
    multi_accept    on;
    accept_mutex    on;
    worker_connections 1024;

    include conf.d/events.conf;
}

http {
    include         mime.types;
    default_type    application/octet-stream;

    log_format  main  '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
        '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
        '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';

    access_log  off;
    #access_log syslog:server=unix:/dev/log,facility=local7,tag=nginx_access,nohostname main;
    error_log   syslog:server=unix:/dev/log,facility=local7,tag=nginx_error,nohostname error;

    sendfile        on;
    server_tokens   off;

    proxy_request_buffering     off;
    fastcgi_request_buffering   off;
    scgi_request_buffering      off;

    proxy_buffering     off;
    fastcgi_buffering   off;
    scgi_buffering      off;

    resolver_timeout              5s;
    client_header_timeout         10s;
    client_body_timeout           60s;
    send_timeout                  60s;
    keepalive_timeout             65s 20s;
    client_max_body_size          0;
    server_names_hash_max_size    8192;

    ssl_certificate           /usr/syno/etc/certificate/system/default/fullchain.pem;
    ssl_certificate_key       /usr/syno/etc/certificate/system/default/privkey.pem;
    ssl_protocols             TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
    ssl_ciphers               ECDHE-....;
    ssl_dhparam               /usr/syno/etc/ssl/dh2048.pem;
    ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;

    ssl_session_tickets       off;
    ssl_session_cache         shared:SSL:1m;
    ssl_session_timeout       3600s;

    server_tag     "nginx";

    gzip_disable    "msie6";
    gzip_min_length 1000;
    gzip_types      text/plain text/css application/javascript application/json;
    gzip_vary       on;
    gzip_static     on;

    upstream synoscgi {
        server unix:/run/synoscgi.sock;
    }

    index index.html index.htm index.php;

    set_real_ip_from 127.0.0.1;
    real_ip_header X-Real-IP;

    server {
        listen 5000 default_server;
        listen [::]:5000 default_server;

        server_name _;

        gzip on;

        include app.d/alias.*.conf;
        root /usr/syno/synoman;
        index index.cgi;

        ignore_invalid_headers off;

        include app.d/dsm.*.conf;
        include /usr/syno/share/nginx/conf.d/dsm.*.conf;
        include conf.d/dsm.*.conf;

        location = / {
            try_files $uri /index.cgi$is_args$query_string;
        }

        location ~ ^/volume(?:X|USB|SATA|Gluster)?\d+/ {
            internal;

            root /;

            include app.d/x-accel.*.conf;
            include conf.d/x-accel.*.conf;
        }

        location ~ /webman/modules/(PersonalSettings|ExternalDevices|FileBrowser)/index_ds.php$ {
            alias /usr/syno/share/OAuth/index_ds.php;
            default_type text/html;
        }

        location ~ \.cgi {
            include             scgi_params;
            scgi_read_timeout   3600s;
            scgi_pass           synoscgi;
        }

        error_page 403 404 500 502 503 504 @error_page;

        location @error_page {
            root /usr/syno/share/nginx;
            rewrite (.*) /error.html break;
        }

        location ~ ^/webman/modules/Indexer/ {
            deny all;
        }

        location ~ ^/webapi/lib/ {
            deny all;
        }

        location ~ ^/webapi/(:?(:?.*)\.lib|(:?.*)\.api|(:?.*)\.auth|lib.def)$ {
            deny all;
        }

        location ~ /\. { access_log off; log_not_found off; deny all; }

        location ~* \.(?:js|css|png|jpg|gif|ico)$ {
            access_log off;
            log_not_found off;
        }

        location = /favicon.ico {
            access_log off;
            log_not_found off;
        }

        location = /robots.txt {
            allow all;
            access_log off;
            log_not_found off;
        }
    }

    server {
        listen 5001 default_server ssl;
        listen [::]:5001 default_server ssl;

        server_name _;

        include app.d/alias.*.conf;
        root /usr/syno/synoman;
        index index.cgi;

        ignore_invalid_headers off;

        include app.d/dsm.*.conf;
        include /usr/syno/share/nginx/conf.d/dsm.*.conf;
        include conf.d/dsm.*.conf;

        location = / {
            try_files $uri /index.cgi$is_args$query_string;
        }

        location ~ ^/volume(?:X|USB|SATA|Gluster)?\d+/ {
            internal;

            root /;

            include app.d/x-accel.*.conf;
            include conf.d/x-accel.*.conf;
        }

        location ~ /webman/modules/(PersonalSettings|ExternalDevices|FileBrowser)/index_ds.php$ {
            alias /usr/syno/share/OAuth/index_ds.php;
            default_type text/html;
        }


        location ~ \.cgi {
            include             scgi_params;
            scgi_read_timeout   3600s;
            scgi_pass           synoscgi;
        }

        error_page 403 404 500 502 503 504 @error_page;

        location @error_page {
            root /usr/syno/share/nginx;
            rewrite (.*) /error.html break;
        }

        location ~ ^/webman/modules/Indexer/ {
            deny all;
        }

        location ~ ^/webapi/lib/ {
            deny all;
        }

        location ~ ^/webapi/(:?(:?.*)\.lib|(:?.*)\.api|(:?.*)\.auth|lib.def)$ {
            deny all;
        }

        location ~ /\. { access_log off; log_not_found off; deny all; }

        location ~* \.(?:js|css|png|jpg|gif|ico)$ {
            access_log off;
            log_not_found off;
        }

        location = /favicon.ico {
            access_log off;
            log_not_found off;
        }

        location = /robots.txt {
            allow all;
            access_log off;
            log_not_found off;
        }

    }

    server {
        listen 80 default_server;
        listen [::]:80 default_server;

        gzip on;

        server_name _;

        location ~ ^/volume(?:X|USB|SATA|Gluster)?\d+/ {
            internal;

            root /;

            include app.d/x-accel.*.conf;
            include conf.d/x-accel.*.conf;
        }

        include app.d/www.*.conf;
        include app.d/alias.*.conf;
        include /usr/syno/share/nginx/conf.d/www.*.conf;
        include conf.d/www.*.conf;

        location = /webdefault/images/logo.jpg {
            alias /usr/syno/share/nginx/logo.jpg;
        }

        error_page 403 404 500 502 503 504 @error_page;

        location @error_page {
            root /usr/syno/share/nginx;
            rewrite (.*) /error.html break;
        }

        location ^~ /.well-known/acme-challenge {
            root /var/lib/letsencrypt;
            default_type text/plain;
        }

        include app.d/.location.webstation.conf*;

        location / {
            rewrite ^ / redirect;
        }
        location ~ ^/$ {
            rewrite / http://$host:5000/ redirect;
        }
    }

    server {
        listen 443 default_server ssl;
        listen [::]:443 default_server ssl;

        server_name _;

        location ~ ^/volume(?:X|USB|SATA|Gluster)?\d+/ {
            internal;

            root /;

            include app.d/x-accel.*.conf;
            include conf.d/x-accel.*.conf;
        }

        include app.d/www.*.conf;
        include app.d/alias.*.conf;
        include /usr/syno/share/nginx/conf.d/www.*.conf;
        include conf.d/www.*.conf;

        location = /webdefault/images/logo.jpg {
            alias /usr/syno/share/nginx/logo.jpg;
        }

        error_page 403 404 500 502 503 504 @error_page;

        location @error_page {
            root /usr/syno/share/nginx;
            rewrite (.*) /error.html break;
        }

        location ^~ /.well-known/acme-challenge {
            root /var/lib/letsencrypt;
            default_type text/plain;
        }
        include app.d/.location.webstation.conf*;

        location / {
            rewrite ^ / redirect;
        }

        location ~ ^/$ {
            rewrite / https://$host:5001/ redirect;
        }
    }

    include conf.d/http.*.conf;
    include app.d/server.*.conf;
    include sites-enabled/*;
}

Please post the complete `nginx.conf` file and Moodle configuration into the question. — Tero Kilkanen, Oct 25 '17 at 21:02

Tero Kilkanen · Answer 1 · 2017-10-26T20:26:38.273

I can't give any guarantees that the following will work, because the whole setup is sort of complex.

server {
    server_name moodle.tracker.im;
    listen 443 ssl;
    ssl_certificate /path/to/moodle/certificate;
    ssl_certificate_key /path/to/moodle/key;
    ... other SSL directives if desired...

    include proxy.conf;
    proxy_read_timeout 3600s;
    location / {
        proxy_pass  http://127.0.0.1:914;
    }
}

So, one needs to define another virtual host for Moodle in order for it to be reachable via the domain name. You also need to make sure that Moodle has been set up correctly to use that domain name, or root directory.

nginx use subfolder and 'A record'

1 Answers1