alternating 404 and 200

[Nuno Magalhães]

Hi,

I've had this issue lately and i've been trying to find where did i
goof up but i'm getting clueless. I've recently compiled 0.8.10 (and a
few days before 0.8.9) on a Debian/linux amd64. Other than messing a
bit with the .deb i had no issues. These were the parameters i used:

--conf-path=/etc/nginx/nginx.conf \
--error-log-path=/var/log/nginx/error.log \
--pid-path=/var/run/nginx.pid \
--lock-path=/var/lock/nginx.lock \
--http-log-path=/var/log/nginx/access.log \
--http-client-body-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/body \
--http-proxy-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/proxy \
--http-fastcgi-temp-path=/var/lib/nginx/fastcgi \
--with-debug \
--with-http_stub_status_module \
--with-http_ssl_module \
--with-http_xslt_module \
--with-http_gzip_static_module \
--with-http_secure_link_module \
--add-module=/path/to/0.8.10/mod_strip \
--add-module=/path/to/0.8.10/mod_zip

I cleared /etc/nginx but i didn't touch other directories (like lib)
before installing 0.8.10, however, i don't think that would cause this
issue. Since i had been having these issues since before 0.8.9 i
decided to go with a spartan configuration:

$ cat /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

user www-data;
worker_processes  2;

error_log  /var/log/nginx/error.log;
pid        /var/run/nginx.pid;

events {
	worker_connections  1024;
}

http {
	root /var/www/nginx-default;
	include       /etc/nginx/mime.types;
	default_type  application/octet-stream;

	#client_body_timeout   10;
	#client_header_timeout 5;
	#keepalive_timeout     5 5;
	#send_timeout          10;

	#limit_zone reqsPerClt $binary_remote_addr 1m;
	#ignore_invalid_headers   on;
	#recursive_error_pages    on;
	#sendfile                 on;
	#server_name_in_redirect off;
	#server_tokens           off;

	#tcp_nodelay on;
	#tcp_nopush  on;

	#gzip              on;
	#gzip_static       on;
	#gzip_buffers      32 8k;
	#gzip_comp_level   9;
	#gzip_http_version 1.0;
	#gzip_min_length   25;
	#gzip_types        text/plain application/xhtml+xml text/css;
	#gzip_vary         on;

	log_format vpt '[$time_local - $host] $remote_addr $remote_user [$request] '
	'[T:$request_time S:$status BS:$body_bytes_sent GZ:$gzip_ratio]
[$http_user_agent]';

	include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
	include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
}

Since this is my testing machine, i have no domains and test my sits
with subdirectories:

$ cat /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

server {
	server_name  localhost;
	listen 127.0.0.1:8080; # only in default rcvbuf=64k backlog=128;
	access_log  /var/log/nginx/localhost.access.log vpt;
	error_log  /var/log/nginx/localhost.error.log;
	#limit_conn  reqsPerClt 5;
	charset utf-8;

	#if ($request_method !~ ^(GET|HEAD|POST)$ ) {
	#	return 444;
	#}

	location / {
		root   /var/www/nginx-default;
		index  index.php index.html;
		#if (!-e $request_filename) {
		#	rewrite ^(.*)$ /index.php?m=$request_filename break;
		#}

	        #if ($request_uri ~*
(^\/|\/site3/|\/intranet\/|\.html|\.php|\.jpg|\.png|\.css|favicon\.ico|robots\.txt)$
) {
		#	break;
		#}
		#return 444;
	}

	location = /favicon.ico {
		return 204;
	}

	error_page  404  /40x.html;
	location = /40x.html {
		root   /var/www/nginx-default;
	}

	error_page  403  /403.html;
	location = /403.html {
		root   /var/www/nginx-default;
	}

	error_page   500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
	location = /50x.html {
		root   /var/www/nginx-default;
	}

	location ~ \.(php|html)$ {
		fastcgi_pass   localhost:8888;
		fastcgi_index  index.php;
		fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME /var/www/nginx-default$fastcgi_script_name;
		fastcgi_param DOCUMENT_ROOT /var/www/nginx-default;
		fastcgi_intercept_errors on;
		include fastcgi_params;
	}
}


The issue is: if i reload repeatedly (hitting the reload button on my
browser repeatedly, at a rate of about 5-6 hits per second), under
given circumstances, half the time nginx will reply with a normal 200
(and 304 for static files), then for another half of the same time
it'll reply with the default 404 page (instead of the configured 404
page). Then 200, then 404, ... If i slow down the reloads, the 200-404
cycle slows down as well, and vice-versa.


- at my docroot i have a very basic index.html, just the necessary to
show <h1>Test</h1>. I can reload all i want, the issue seldom occurs.
- i have a very basic html+php site and, again, the issue seldom
occurs, usually just after i changed the URL from one site to another.
- i have another basic php+xhtml site. Reloading
/site3/index.php?param=value will give the aforementioned results
every time.

I haven't touched my fastcgi configuration (although i have upgraded
my system lately). I was fiddling with the .conf files at the time but
even going back to basic conf i still get this issue. I compiled from
source and installed using checkinstall but i don't think that would
interfere. So, i'm not sure this is because of nginx or my system, or
the 3rd site, or the fastcgi or what...

I'm kinda lost in finding where the hell did i screw up. Any hints?
TIA,
Nuno Magalhães

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