Unknown directive "if" in /usr/local/nginx/nginx.conf

Server NGINX
1

Guys,

The following is what I have done. My goal is ultimately use regex to
inspect the incoming URI and make proxy_pass decisions. The “if”
statement below is just a test to validate the if statements work. As
you can see, I get the “unkown directive” error. Do you think I need to
use the --with-pcre= option?

yum install gcc openssl-devel pcre-devel zlib-devel
yum install mlocate

./configure --sbin-path=/sbin/nginx
–conf-path=/usr/local/nginx/nginx.conf
–pid-path=/usr/local/nginx/nginx.pid --with-http_ssl_module
–with-http_perl_module --without-http_rewrite_module

make
sudo make install

============================= snippet from
nginx.conf=============================

location /johndesp/ {
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
proxy_redirect off;
proxy_pass_request_headers on;
if (!-f $request_filename) {
proxy_pass
http://ec2-75-101-166-203.compute-1.amazonaws.com:8080/johndesp/;
}

thanks

johndesp

Posted at Nginx Forum:

2

Hello!

On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 12:37:44PM -0500, johndesp wrote:

Guys,

The following is what I have done. My goal is ultimately use regex to inspect the incoming URI and make proxy_pass decisions. The “if” statement below is just a test to validate the if statements work. As you can see, I get the “unkown directive” error. Do you think I need to use the --with-pcre= option?

yum install gcc openssl-devel pcre-devel zlib-devel
yum install mlocate

./configure --sbin-path=/sbin/nginx --conf-path=/usr/local/nginx/nginx.conf --pid-path=/usr/local/nginx/nginx.pid --with-http_ssl_module --with-http_perl_module --without-http_rewrite_module

You have to remove “–without-http_rewrite_module” configure
argument. It disables rewrite module where “if” directive
defined.

[…]

location /johndesp/ {
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
proxy_redirect off;
proxy_pass_request_headers on;
if (!-f $request_filename) {
proxy_pass http://ec2-75-101-166-203.compute-1.amazonaws.com:8080/johndesp/;
}

Also, it’s good idea to use try_files or error_page fallback
instead. See here for details:

http://wiki.nginx.org/NginxHttpCoreModule#error_page
http://wiki.nginx.org/NginxHttpCoreModule#try_files

Maxim D.