nginx location index directive not working - nginx

Question

I'm new to nginx and I just can't determine why my nginx config doesn't work as expected. All I want to do is to make nginx prioritize index.html over index.php for every web root (/) request.
This is my nginx config:
user www-data;
worker_processes 4;
pid /var/run/nginx.pid;
events {
worker_connections 768;
multi_accept on;
}
http {
##
# Basic Settings
##
server {
location / {
index index.html index.php;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
fastcgi_pass localhost:9000;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME
$document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
include fastcgi_params;
}
}
sendfile on;
tcp_nopush on;
tcp_nodelay off;
keepalive_timeout 15;
keepalive_requests 100000;
types_hash_max_size 2048;
client_body_in_file_only clean;
client_body_buffer_size 32K;
client_max_body_size 300M;
server_tokens off;
# server_names_hash_bucket_size 64;
# server_name_in_redirect off;
include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
default_type application/octet-stream;
----------------- cut ---------------
##
# Virtual Host Configs
##
include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
}
Where's my error? What's the correct way to write this nginx config?

Answer 1

If you explicitly request /index.html, is it served? If not, you might want to add an explicit root /path/to/root; to your server {} block. Also verify that index.html has the correct permissions.
This will help with troubleshooting: It will force a 404 if the root index.html is not found. If that happens, at least you can check the logs to see were it was looking:
location = / {
index index.html;
}
Also, be sure to do nginx -s reload when changing the config.

Answer 2

Convention:
You should keep location and server declarations in virtual host files (/etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf; and /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;, as you can see from the nginx conf). Files in /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf; are typically symlinked to files in /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*; in order to become "enabled"
Some things to try
See my blog post here which has a setup similar to yours.
Try moving your index index.html index.html index.php files directive outside of a location {} block