nginx browser caching directive brings 404 not found - nginx

Question

One of the sites I want to implement browser caching for images
has this particular server {} block on virtual.conf
server {
listen 80;
server_name www.example.net example.net;
location / {
root /var/www/example.net/public_html;
index index.html index.htm index.php;
}
error_page 404 /404.html;
location = /404.html {
root /var/www/example.net/public_html;
}
# redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html
error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
location = /50x.html {
root /var/www/example.net/public_html;
}
location ~* \.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif)$ {
expires 180d;
}
# pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
location ~ \.php$ {
root /var/www/example.net/public_html;
error_log /var/www/example.net/public_html/error.log error;
fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
include fastcgi_params;
}
}
Normally this directive
location ~* \.(jpg|jpeg|png|gif)$ {
expires 180d;
}
Should take care of caching images on the user end. But instead when I access
an image on my website I get 404 not found. I am not sure why this I caused.
Yes. I reloaded/restarted nginx after adding the directive.
The image resides in a subfolder like:
example.net/images/dir1/user_photos/photo.jpg
or
example.net/images/dir1/user_photos/photo.jpg
Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you.

Answer 1

Root parameter should be outside the location directive.
It is not the best practice to have root inside location
Change
location / {
root /var/www/html;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
}
To:
root /var/www/html;
location / {
index index.php index.html index.htm;
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
}