Nginx: Static files result in 404

Question

I'm trying to use this recipe for nginx vhost configuration for Drupal:

server {
    server_name example.com;
    root /var/www/drupal8; ## <-- Your only path reference.

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

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

    # Very rarely should these ever be accessed outside of your lan
    location ~* \.(txt|log)$ {
        allow 192.168.0.0/16;
        deny all;
    }

    location ~ \..*/.*\.php$ {
        return 403;
    }

    location ~ ^/sites/.*/private/ {
        return 403;
    }

    # Block access to scripts in site files directory
    location ~ ^/sites/[^/]+/files/.*\.php$ {
        deny all;
    }

    # Allow "Well-Known URIs" as per RFC 5785
    location ~* ^/.well-known/ {
        allow all;
    }

    # Block access to "hidden" files and directories whose names begin with a
    # period. This includes directories used by version control systems such
    # as Subversion or Git to store control files.
    location ~ (^|/)\. {
        return 403;
    }

    location / {
        # try_files $uri @rewrite; # For Drupal <= 6
        try_files $uri /index.php?$query_string; # For Drupal >= 7
    }

    location @rewrite {
        rewrite ^/(.*)$ /index.php?q=$1;
    }

    # Don't allow direct access to PHP files in the vendor directory.
    location ~ /vendor/.*\.php$ {
        deny all;
        return 404;
    }

    # In Drupal 8, we must also match new paths where the '.php' appears in
    # the middle, such as update.php/selection. The rule we use is strict,
    # and only allows this pattern with the update.php front controller.
    # This allows legacy path aliases in the form of
    # blog/index.php/legacy-path to continue to route to Drupal nodes. If
    # you do not have any paths like that, then you might prefer to use a
    # laxer rule, such as:
    #   location ~ \.php(/|$) {
    # The laxer rule will continue to work if Drupal uses this new URL
    # pattern with front controllers other than update.php in a future
    # release.
    location ~ '\.php$|^/update.php' {
        fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+?\.php)(|/.*)$;
        # Security note: If you're running a version of PHP older than the
        # latest 5.3, you should have "cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0;" in php.ini.
        # See http://serverfault.com/q/627903/94922 for details.
        include fastcgi_params;
        # Block httpoxy attacks. See https://httpoxy.org/.
        fastcgi_param HTTP_PROXY "";
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        fastcgi_param PATH_INFO $fastcgi_path_info;
        fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING $query_string;
        fastcgi_intercept_errors on;
        # PHP 5 socket location.
        #fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
        # PHP 7 socket location.
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.0-fpm.sock;
    }

    # Fighting with Styles? This little gem is amazing.
    # location ~ ^/sites/.*/files/imagecache/ { # For Drupal <= 6
    location ~ ^/sites/.*/files/styles/ { # For Drupal >= 7
        try_files $uri @rewrite;
    }

    # Handle private files through Drupal. Private file's path can come
    # with a language prefix.
    location ~ ^(/[a-z\-]+)?/system/files/ { # For Drupal >= 7
        try_files $uri /index.php?$query_string;
    }

    location ~* \.(js|css|png|jpg|jpeg|gif|ico|svg)$ {
        try_files $uri @rewrite;
        expires max;
        log_not_found off;
    }
}

However it doesn't work as intended. Namely, I cannot access any static files - they give me 404 error, which is utterly strange to me, because if I understand correctly, according to this fragments:

location @rewrite {
    rewrite ^/(.*)$ /index.php?q=$1;
}

location ~* \.(js|css|png|jpg|jpeg|gif|ico|svg)$ {
    try_files $uri @rewrite;
    expires max;
    log_not_found off;
}

It should run index.php if static file has been not found... So why 404?

Also, I'm running nginx in a Docker container, but I made sure that it has read access to all directories, and I'm running some other configurations eg. for Prestashop, that doesn't suffer from this problem.

Answer 1

Your document root is defined as /var/www/drupal8 so that is the directory where Drupal's files should be located. For instance if you load http://www.example.com/sites/all/themes/README.txt that file should be at /var/www/drupal8/sites/all/themes/README.txt.