Working with alias inside location - nginx

Question

So here's my server block
server {
listen 80;
server_name domain.tld;
root /var/www/domain.tld/html;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
location / {
}
location /phpmyadmin {
alias /var/www/phpmyadmin;
}
location /nginx_status {
stub_status on;
access_log off;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
try_files $uri =404;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
include fastcgi_params;
}
}
browsing http://domain.tld/index.php works fine the only problem im encountering is browsing http://domain.tld/phpmyadmin/. It returns 404 yet the folder /var/www/phpmyadmin exist on the server. Viewing /var/log/nginx/error.log, no error is being logged there yet the access to it is logged in /var/log/nginx/access.log. What could be the problem here?

Answer 1

The problem is that phpmyadmin is a PHP application and your location ~ \.php$ block does not point to the correct document root.
You need to construct two PHP locations with different document roots.
If phpmyadmin is located at /var/www/phpmyadmin, you do not need an alias directive, as a root directive will be more efficient. See this document.
server {
listen 80;
server_name domain.tld;
root /var/www/domain.tld/html;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
location / {
}
location /nginx_status {
stub_status on;
access_log off;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
try_files $uri =404;
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
}
location ^~ /phpmyadmin {
root /var/www;
location ~ \.php$ {
try_files $uri =404;
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
}
}
}
The location ^~ /phpmyadmin is a prefix location that takes precedence over the regex location normally used to process .php files. It contains a location ~ \.php$ block which inherits a value of /var/www for the document root.
It is advisable to include fastcgi_params before defining other fastcgi_param parameters otherwise your custom values may be silently overwritten.
See this document for more.