Help needed with Nginx reverse proxy config...

Posted on July 24, 2021

Referencing article:

https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-configure-nginx-as-a-web-server-and-reverse-proxy-for-apache-on-one-ubuntu-20-04-server

Thanks for the write-up, it was (for the most part) successful however I’ve gotten to a problematic point and cannot find a solution.

In step 11 describing the setup of static caching, the location directives change. Now, when my server config only uses the following location directive, proxying to Apache works well:

   location / {
        proxy_pass http://your_server_ip:8080;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    }

However, the moment I change the location directive to "location ~ \.php$ {", nothing works. The website attempts to load but it’s mostly broken.

I’ve tried numerous iterations of the config you’ve described in step 11 but nothing works, unless I change the location directive back to "location / {".

I’m trying to setup FastCGI caching in reverse proxy mode but so far have hit a major brick-wall based on parsing of the config file.

Would really appreciate some help with this.

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Bobby

July 25, 2021

Hi there,

If you are proxying the connection to a PHP-FPM backend directly without going through Apache, it is not enough to only update "location ~ \.php$ {" part but you also need to change the proxy rules. Uou could use the following configuration:

    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $realpath_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }