nginx fastcgi "Primary script unknown" when configuring userdir

Question

I hate configuring nginx. It's so complicated. How do I get PHP to work in my user dirs? Here's the relevant part of my nginx.conf:

 location ~ ^/~(.+?)(/.*)?$ { autoindex on; autoindex_exact_size off; alias /home/$1/public_html$2; location ~ \.php { include /etc/nginx/fastcgi.conf; fastcgi_intercept_errors on; fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; fastcgi_index index.php; } } 

This gives me the error: FastCGI sent in stderr: "Primary script unknown" while reading response header from upstream in the nginx error log.

Here's my /etc/nginx/fastcgi.conf:

fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING $query_string; fastcgi_param REQUEST_METHOD $request_method; fastcgi_param CONTENT_TYPE $content_type; fastcgi_param CONTENT_LENGTH $content_length; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_NAME $fastcgi_script_name; fastcgi_param REQUEST_URI $request_uri; fastcgi_param DOCUMENT_URI $document_uri; fastcgi_param DOCUMENT_ROOT $document_root; fastcgi_param SERVER_PROTOCOL $server_protocol; fastcgi_param HTTPS $https if_not_empty; fastcgi_param GATEWAY_INTERFACE CGI/1.1; fastcgi_param SERVER_SOFTWARE nginx/$nginx_version; fastcgi_param REMOTE_ADDR $remote_addr; fastcgi_param REMOTE_PORT $remote_port; fastcgi_param SERVER_ADDR $server_addr; fastcgi_param SERVER_PORT $server_port; fastcgi_param SERVER_NAME $server_name; # PHP only, required if PHP was built with --enable-force-cgi-redirect fastcgi_param REDIRECT_STATUS 200; 

I'm assuming nginx isn't resolving the script name correctly. I hate having to tell nginx where to look in my filesystem, writing custom regexes for what should be built-in (or at least standardized and documented) functionality.

Answer 1

Problem is that in your fastcgi.conf you define SCRIPT_FILENAME as $document_root$fastcgi_script_name; but you then use the alias direcive to set the path.

You should update your SCRIPT_FILENAME to use $request_filename

You can also go back to nested location if you prefer. If you still get this error afterwards then I have documented all the possibilities here: https://blog.martinfjordvald.com/no-input-file-specified-with-php-and-nginx/

Please check that as there can be multiple other causes.

Answer 2

When You define redirects, aliases and You do use fastcgi in the conf of your site in nginx You can try this to let them work:

Change:

location ~ \.php$ {
...
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
...
}

Into:

location ~ \.php$ {
...
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $request_filename;
fastcgi_param REQUEST_URI $uri?$args;
...
}

If this does not work try to use as said above without the REQUEST_URI, so it will be:

location ~ \.php$ {
...
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $request_filename;
...
}

Answer 3

Try using a separate location block for PHP scripts in the userdirs. This does not need to be nested.

location ~ ^/~([^/]+)/(.+\.php)$ { alias /home/$1/public_html/$2; include /etc/nginx/fastcgi.conf; fastcgi_intercept_errors on; fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; fastcgi_index index.php; }