nginx html not showing in subdirectories - nginx

Question

I have a default html template that I show instead of the nginx 404 default one if I visit jitsi.example.com:
<h1> Not found </h1>
The problem comes when I want to show that same html page in a subroute like jitsi.example.com/foo for example and I get the nginx 404 default template. I hardcoded foo as an example but the idea is to match any subdirectory / subroute.
These are my config files:
user www-data;
worker_processes auto;
pid /run/nginx.pid;
include /etc/nginx/modules-enabled/*.conf;
events {
worker_connections 768;
}
http {
sendfile on;
tcp_nopush on;
tcp_nodelay on;
keepalive_timeout 65;
types_hash_max_size 2048;
server_tokens off;
include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
default_type application/octet-stream;
ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3; # Dropping SSLv3, ref: POODLE
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;
gzip on;
include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
}
And this is my default file:
upstream backend{
server localhost:8012;
server localhost:8013;
}
server {
root /var/www/html;
index index.html index.htm index.nginx-debian.html;
server_name example.com www.example.com;
location / {
proxy_pass http://backend;
proxy_http_version 1.1;
proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
}
listen [::]:443 ssl ipv6only=on; # managed by Certbot
listen 443 ssl; # managed by Certbot
ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot
ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot
}
server {
if ($host = www.example.com) {
return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
} # managed by Certbot
if ($host = example.com) {
return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
} # managed by Certbot
server_name jitsi.example.com; # managed by Certbot
#return 404; # managed by Certbot
listen [::]:443 ssl; # managed by Certbot
listen 443 ssl; # managed by Certbot
ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/fullchain.pem; # managed by Certbot
ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/example.com/privkey.pem; # managed by Certbot
include /etc/letsencrypt/options-ssl-nginx.conf; # managed by Certbot
ssl_dhparam /etc/letsencrypt/ssl-dhparams.pem; # managed by Certbot
location / {
root /home/example/nginx-templates;
}
location /foo {
root /home/example/nginx-templates;
}
}
And I know it's getting to /foo route because if I return 200; in nginx I get that status code. However, I want to render the template from /home/example/nginx-templates.

Answer 1

Ok. I created an error_404.html:
sudo vim /usr/share/nginx/html/error_404.html
with:
<h1> Not found </h1>
Then I reference it inside /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default:
if ($host = example.com) {
return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
} # managed by Certbot
server_name jitsi.example.com; # managed by Certbot
#return 404; # managed by Certbot
error_page 404 =404 /error_404.html;
location = /error_404.html {
root /usr/share/nginx/html;
internal;
}
location / {
root /home/example/nginx-templates;
}