Nginx rewrite throws out 404 Not Found - nginx

Question

After adding rewrite block, the Ubuntu 12.04 server hosting Rails 3.2.12 app throws out 404 Not Found error when entering mysite.com/nbhy.
Here nbhy is a symlink under root /var/www/ pointing to /var/www/nbhyop/current/public and it is for hosting rails app. The purpose of the rewrite is to rewrite to /nbhy/authentify/sigin when user entering /nbhy or /nbhy/
Here is server block in nginx.conf:
server {
listen 80;
server_name mysite.com;
root /var/www/;
passenger_enabled on;
rails_env production;
passenger_base_uri /nbhy;
}
location / {
rewrite "/nbhy" /nbhy/authentify/signin last;
rewrite "/nbhy/" /nbhy/authentify/signin last;
}
}
The error.log on nginx for the error is:
2013/06/09 21:36:31 [error] 32505#0: *1 open() "/var/www/nbhy/authentify/signin" failed (2: No such file or directory), client: 67.173.143.107, server: mysite.com, request: "GET /nbhy HTTP/1.1", host: "mysite.com"
Before adding rewrite location block, the system could bring up login page with url mysite.com/nbhy/authentify/signin. But now it throws out error after adding the rewrite block. What's wrong with the rewrite?

Answer 1

The location block must be within the server block:
server {
listen 80;
server_name mysite.com;
root /var/www/;
passenger_enabled on;
rails_env production;
passenger_base_uri /nbhy;
location / {
# Matches /nbhy /nbhy/ /nbhy////////////...
location ~ ^/nbhy/*$ {
return 301 /nbhy/authentify/signin;
}
# Other rules (regex) goes here
}
}
The symbolic link is from no concern at this stage of processing.
You are using rewrite, were the first pattern is always a regular expression. Mohammad AbuShady was absolutely right with his answer of using a more specific location. But using a rewrite is not necessary, a return is better because we want nginx to abort execution and simply—well—return.
Also note how I enclosed the regular expression within the generic block location / {} which matches all locations. This is the proper way to write location blocks according to Igor Sysoev. See this forum post for more info.
My configuration above is also catching URLs with more than one slash (hence the *) and is meant as a more user friendly matching because a user might simply type too many slashes. No need to punish them, instead answer with a proper redirect.
I hope this helps!
Related Links
How nginx processes a request

Answer 2

If I understand correctly, you have a URI your-host/nbhy which you want to rewrite to your-host/nbhy/authentify/signin, which should be linked to /var/www/nbhy/authentify/signin, which is symlinked to /var/www/nbhyop/current/public/authentify/signin?
It looks like nginx is complaining about not finding /var/www/nbhy/authentify/signin. Since you have a symlink from /var/www/nbhy to /var/www/nbhyop/current/public, there has to be a folder /var/www/nbhyop/current/public/authentify/signin. Are you sure there is one, and that your www-data user (or whatever user you're using) has rights to the directories above it?
Also, nginx has an option for disabling symlinks. Try setting that to off. That's the default, I know, but there might be another file that sets it to on.
It might also be that nginx doesn't follow the symlink because you added last to your rewrites. Try removing that, and see if it works then.

Answer 3

why not try adding a more specific location block
location ~ /nbhy/?$ {
rewrite ^ /nbhy/authentify/signin last;
}
or you could remove the regex but it would match longer urls like /nbhy/one/two
location /nbhy {
rewrite ^ /nbhy/authentify/signin last;
}