Variable $1 is Empty

Server NGINX
1

Hi everyone,

This is my first time installing nginx. I install it on my Debian
5.0.3 VPS and use Debian’s repository to install it (version: 0.6.32).

I’m having problem with using regular expression at server_name.
Here’s my configuration:

server {
listen 80;
server_name ~^(.+).mydomain.com$;
location / {
root /home/$1/public_html;
index index.html index.htm;
}
}

When I hit myusername.mydomain.com, where
/home/myusername/public_html/ is exist. It gives me a 404 error. And
when I view the log file, seems like $1 is null or something.

2010/10/14 10:47:08 [error] 4924#0: *3 “/home//public_html/index.html”
is not found (2: No such file or directory), client: 173.245.73.113,
server: ~^(.+).mydomain.com$, request: “GET / HTTP/1.1”, host:
“myusername.mydomain.com”

Am I doing wrong?
Any helps will be appreciated, thanks in advance.

Indra

2

I think you should change

server {
listen 80;
server_name ~^(.+).mydomain.com$;
location / {
root /home/$1/public_html;
index index.html index.htm;
}
}

to

server {
listen 80;
server_name ~^(.+).mydomain.com$;
set $name $1;
location / {
root /home/$name/public_html;
index index.html index.htm;
}
}

2010/10/14 Indra S. [email protected]:

3

Hello!

On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 05:56:34PM +0700, Indra S. wrote:

server_name ~^(.+).mydomain.com$;
2010/10/14 10:47:08 [error] 4924#0: *3 “/home//public_html/index.html”
is not found (2: No such file or directory), client: 173.245.73.113,
server: ~^(.+).mydomain.com$, request: “GET / HTTP/1.1”, host:
“myusername.mydomain.com”

Am I doing wrong?
Any helps will be appreciated, thanks in advance.

Changes with nginx 0.7.44:

…
*) Bugfix: if there is the single server for given address:port
pair,
then captures in regular expressions in a “server_name” directive
did not work.
…

Adding another server listening on the same socket should resolve
the issue, though I would recommend to upgrade. 0.6.* branch is
legacy and not supported, and you are using an old version from
this branch.

Additionally, it’s really bad idea to use enumerated captures in
server_name. Things may be screwed up easily - it’s enough to add
another regexp to config (e.g. regexp location) to break anything.

There are two possible safe aproaches:

  1. Use named captures as available in nginx 0.8.25+.

    server {
    server_name ~^(P.+).mydomain.com$;
    root /home/$name/public_html;
    …
    }

See Server names for details.

  1. For old versions - use server-level if, i.e.

    server {
    server_name *.mydomain.com;

     set $name "";
 if ($host ~ "^(.+)\.mydomain\.com$") {
     set $name $1;
 }

 root /home/$name/public_html;

 ...

    }

Maxim D.

4

Hello!

On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 04:51:05PM +0400, Maxim D. wrote:

[…]

Adding another server listening on the same socket should resolve
the issue, though I would recommend to upgrade. 0.6.* branch is
legacy and not supported, and you are using an old version from
this branch.

Ah, as António pointed out - 0.6.* don’t have server_name
captures at all, so the only options is upgrade or use “if”
matching.

Maxim D.

5

On 14 Out 2010 11h56 WEST, [email protected] wrote:

listen 80;
server_name ~^(.+).mydomain.com$;
location / {
root /home/$1/public_html;
index index.html index.htm;
}
}

According to Server names you need
version >= 0.7.40 in order to use regex with capturing groups in
server_name. Apart from that your config seems correct.

— appa

6

On Thu, Oct 14, 2010 at 7:58 PM, Maxim D. [email protected]
wrote:

Ah, as Antnio pointed out - 0.6.* don’t have server_name
captures at all, so the only options is upgrade or use “if”
matching.

Maxim D.

Antnio, Maxim,
Thanks for your reply, if that’s the problem, I will install the
latest version of Nginx.