Gzip compression won't disable

Server NGINX
1

Hey all,

I’m running nginx 1.2.6 from a packaged install on Ubuntu 13.04. I’m at
a
total loss as to how this is happening but I simply cannot disable gzip
compression for my server no matter what I try. Setting gzip off; in
nginx.conf in the http context doesn’t work. I modified the default
config
setting that was already there. I even moved it to the bottom of the
section to see if maybe there was something else that was toggling it on
after that config entry.

Is there something else I can look for that would be enabling gzip
compression on my server? I saw there’s a static gzip compression module
that’s optionally compiled in but that doesn’t seem relevant to my
situation as this is a REST call.

Here’s my response header from curl which does not appear to gzip
compress:

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Server: nginx/1.2.6 (Ubuntu)
Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2013 00:08:26 GMT
Content-Type: application/json
Content-Length: 0
Connection: keep-alive
P3P: CP=“CAO PSA OUR”
Set-Cookie:
jcid=5215567ae4b0861a8dd5c1dc;Path=/;Domain=.foo.com;Expires=Fri,
22-Aug-2014 00:08:26 GMT;Max-Age=31536000
Expires: Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT
ETag: “5215567ae4b0861a8dd5c1dc”

However that same URL’s response headers in any browser (chrome, FF,
safari) are as follows:

Connection:keep-alive
Content-Encoding:gzip
Content-Type:application/json
Date:Thu, 22 Aug 2013 01:39:24 GMT
ETag:“521462bfe4b00dcc1c3b7c52-gzip”
Expires:Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT
P3P:CP=“CAO PSA OUR”
Server:nginx/1.2.6 (Ubuntu)
Set-Cookie:jcid=521462bfe4b00dcc1c3b7c52;Path=/;Domain=.foo.com;Expires=Fri,
22-Aug-2014 01:39:24 GMT;Max-Age=31536000
Transfer-Encoding:chunked
Vary:Accept-Encoding, User-Agent

I’m certain that I’m doing something wrong but I’m out of ideas at the
moment on what to check. Thanks for any insight or pointers anyone may
be
able to provide.

Cheers!

2

My guess: If the compressed files are pregenerated and sitting on the
filesystem (e.g. you have blah.json and blah.json.gz), nginx will serve
them
to any browser that sends the correct Accept-Encoding headers.

Good luck.

Posted at Nginx Forum:

3

Hello,

On Wed, Aug 21, 2013 at 9:48 PM, Michael K. [email protected]
wrote:

Hey all,

I’m running nginx 1.2.6 from a packaged install on Ubuntu 13.04. I’m at a
total loss as to how this is happening but I simply cannot disable gzip
compression for my server no matter what I try. Setting gzip off; in
nginx.conf in the http context doesn’t work. I modified the default config
setting that was already there. I even moved it to the bottom of the
section to see if maybe there was something else that was toggling it on
after that config entry.

​​I’m not​ sure moving the directive around the same level has any
impact
if you don’t have another ‘gzip’ directive there.
Have you checked that there is no gzip at inferior levels (server or
location blocks).
Even better: gzip directive is internally set to ‘off’. Check that there
is
no ‘gzip’ usage anywhere in any included file of your configuration
(simple
grep) and you’ll have the conf you wish.

2nd part:
Check your conf is really applied on reload: first, check the syntax
with
nginx -t, then monitor the logs when reloading to see any error popping
up.

B. R.