Nginx, try_files proxy and named location with 404 fallback

Question

I have an odd issue which is only affecting one local app I'm working on - other apps with this approach seem to work fine (Ghost). This is from my Nginx server config: ``` location @node_proxy { proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme; proxy_set_header X-NginX-Proxy true; proxy_set_header Host $host; proxy_redirect off; proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:5000; } location / { try_files @node_proxy =404; } ``` As I said, I have Ghost running identically to this and it performs fine. However for this config it results in every request being a 404 - it seems to never hit the proxy. I've checked logs and this confirms my suspicions, no entries in the access or error logs. The app I'm proxying through to in this instance is just a simple Express based node app, so nothing complex. Visiting `http://127.0.0.1:5000` I see the expected results. If I change my config to: ``` location / { proxy_set_header X-Real-…

Accepted Answer

Try this kind of hack:

```
location @root {
    ...
}

location / {
    error_page 418 = @root; return 418; # redirect to @root
}
```

Seems like it is impossible to jump to named location from a regular one. You also can try `try_files @root @root`, however Igor Sysoev (nginx's author) says that `error_page` is better since it uses less resources.

Nginx, try_files proxy and named location with 404 fallback

Solution

Problem