Hotlink Protection Problem

[jerleung]

I was trying to prevent hotlinking for http://mydomain.com/photos/

then I use the following in nginx.conf

                location ~ /photos/ {
                        valid_referers none blocked server_names;
                        if ($invalid_referer) {
                        return 403;
                  }
                }

I found that it will block hotlinking from other sites and return 403. However, it will return 404 when the referer is mydomain.com

After testing for quite some time, I found that the following will work 

                location ~ /upload/ {
                        root /home/domainuser/domains/mydomin.com/public_html;
                        valid_referers none blocked server_names;
                        if ($invalid_referer) {
                        return 403;                  }
                }

It only works when I add root to it. Yet, most tutorial does not state that. Is it a buy on nginx 0.7.59 or I have set something wrong in the nginx.conf so that I have to add the root?

Posted at Nginx Forum: http://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,2730,2730#msg-2730