404 error on homepage when using Nginx proxying to Apache

3 comments

1. Both servers are listening to the same port. You have Nginx set to listen to 80 and nothing is set for Apache unless it’s in your ports.conf.

   Your also proxy passing to Apache port 80 in your Nginx conf.

   In the Nginx conf change

   proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:80;

   to

   proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:9000;

   change listen XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:80; to listen 80;

   In your Vhosts

   add

   NameVirtualHost *:9000
   Listen 9000
   

   Above the <VirtualHost> tag or in the ports.conf file (If you have other vhost that don’t use Nginx add it to the top of your vhost. Change virtual host to look like this:

   <VirtualHost *9000>

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2. I copied your config and I got those 404s. It seems like you have mixed up fastcgi and Apache is confused where to find fastcgi and WordPress. As soon as I separated the fastcgi binary from WordPress I was able to make it work. In my setup I had WordPress was installed in /var/www/wordpress which is out of document root, my document root was something out of /var. But I could access WordPress as http://domain.com/wordpress/ because of following Alias.

   Alias /wordpress /var/www/wordpress
   

   Then I created a fastcgi directory outside of WordPress in /var/www so it will be

   mkdir /var/www/fastcgi
   

   Then I linked the php5-cgi binary to this directory:

   ln -s /usr/bin/php5-cgi /var/www/fastcgi/
   

   I separated the php5-cgi because I don’t like the idea of having a binary file under the directory accessible via web server.

   Then I config my Apache as follows:

   Alias /wordpress /var/www/wordpress
   Alias /fastcgi   /var/www/fastcgi
   
   FastCgiExternalServer /var/www/fastcgi -host 127.0.0.1:9000
   <Directory /var/www/wordpress>
       AllowOverride All
       AddHandler php-fastcgi .php
       Action php-fastcgi /fastcgi/php5-cgi
       AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
       DirectoryIndex index.php
   
      Options +FollowSymLinks +ExecCGI +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch
   </Directory>
   
   <Location /fastcgi>
       SetHandler fcgid-script
       Options +ExecCGI
   </Location>
   

   And it started working. Hope this will help you fix your Apache config, let me know if there is anything wrong.

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3. I don’t know whether I should be proud or embarrassed that I’m coming back to answer my own question more than a year later. So, I finally found some time to work on this issue today and managed to get this configuration working. Turns out there were a few missing statements in my original configuration, but the critical change was in wp-config.php. To pull everything together, starting off with my nginx config (which is almost entirely lifted from the nginx wiki):

   server {
   
           listen   XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX:80;
           server_name wptest.mydomain.com;
           error_log /var/log/nginx/wp-error.log;
   
           ## Your only path reference.
           root /var/www/wordpress;
           ## This should be in your http block and if it is, it's not needed here.
           index index.php;
   
           location = /favicon.ico {
                   log_not_found off;
                   access_log off;
           }
   
           location = /robots.txt {
                   allow all;
                   log_not_found off;
                   access_log off;
           }
   
           location / {
                   # This is cool because no php is touched for static content.
                   # include the "?$args" part so non-default permalinks doesn't break when using query string
                   try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
           }
   
           location ~ .php$ {
                   proxy_set_header X-Real-IP  $remote_addr;
                   proxy_set_header Host $host;
                   proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
                   proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:80;
           }
   
           location ~* .(js|css|png|jpg|jpeg|gif|ico)$ {
                   expires max;
                   log_not_found off;
           }
   
   }
   

   Next up, my Apache config:

   <VirtualHost 127.0.0.1>
           server_name wptest.mydomain.com
           ServerAdmin webmaster@mydomain.com
           LogLevel warn
           ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/wp-error.log
           CustomLog /var/log/apache2/wp-access.log combined
   
           AddType application/x-httpd-fastphp .php
           AddHandler php-fastcgi .php
           Action php-fastcgi /fastcgi
           Alias /fastcgi /var/www/wordpress
           FastCgiExternalServer /var/www/wordpress -host 127.0.0.1:9000
   
                           DocumentRoot /var/www/wordpress
   
                           #Site Directives
                           RewriteEngine on
                           Options +FollowSymLinks +ExecCGI -Indexes -MultiViews
   
                           <Directory />
                             AllowOverride None
                           </Directory>
   
                           <Directory /var/www/wordpress/>
                                   AllowOverride Limit FileInfo AuthConfig
                                   order allow,deny
                                   allow from all
                           </Directory>
   
   </VirtualHost>
   

   Finally, the one extra line in the wp-config.php file that makes it all work (Taken from the Codex)

   $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] = $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_HOST'];
   

   With this configuration, I have tested that pretty permalinks via .htaccess works correctly.

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