Nginx on Windows: Problem with leading slash on root path (GetFileAttributesEx() fails because of wrong Path syntax)

[Alexander Vogt]

Hi everyone,

i want to run nginx+php on windows for development purposes.

Im using the nginx-0.8.34 native build from the nginx download page (no 
cygwin ports). PHP and static files are served, although the following 
problems occur:

1. PHP is executed correctly, but it always sends a "500 internal server 
error" header
2. static files (for example css, js, etc) are sent with a "text/html" mime 
type, causing css not to be displayed on firefox

I digged a bit deeper, in the error.log i find a lot of lines like this:

58:42 [crit] 476#3664: *4 GetFileAttributesEx() 
"/C:/creativespot/dslocal/rollout/public_html/style_combined/50b1a4103b08a80dd9bd0c2a706eaa17.css" 
failed (123: Die Syntax für den Dateinamen, Verzeichnisnamen oder die 
Datenträgerbezeichnung ist falsch), client: 127.0.0.1, server: 
dogspot.local, request: "GET 
/style_combined/50b1a4103b08a80dd9bd0c2a706eaa17.css HTTP/1.1", host: 
"dogspot.local"

The error message says GetFileAttributesEx failed because of a wrong 
path/filename syntax. What seems to be the problem is the leading slash on 
the root directory: "/C:/creativespot/....." which should be 
"C:/creativespot/....".

I believe that this might be the reason for not determining the correct 
mime-type (mime.types file is included correctly, i even tried to embed the 
whole "types {...}" section directly in nginx.conf, which didnt fix that 
issue). I also tried to use relative paths, absolute paths with drive 
letters, absolute paths without drive letters, but no difference, whatever i 
do, nginx always seems to prefix my path with a leading "/".

How can i fix that? any help appreciated!

Here are some details on my server layout:

- nginx 0.8.34 native in c:\creativespot\dslocal\nginx
- web root should be c:\creativespot\dslocal\dsrollout\public_html
- starting nginx from a batch script that does a "cd" to the nginx directory 
and a "start /b nginx.exe"
- nginx.conf:

  worker_processes 1; error_log 
c:/creativespot/dslocal/nginx/logs/error.log; pid 
c:/creativespot/dslocal/nginx/nginx.pid; events {
     worker_connections 1024;
}

http {

proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;

proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;

client_max_body_size 6m;
proxy_buffer_size  16k;
proxy_buffers      32   16k;

include c:/creativespot/dslocal/nginx/conf/mime.types;

include c:/creativespot/dslocal/nginx/conf/sites-available/*;
	
}

the vhost conf:

server {
	listen 80 default_server;

	server_name	dogspot.local;
	
	root c:/creativespot/dslocal/rollout/public_html;

	index index.php;
	
	location /images {
		rewrite ^/images/(.*) /images/dogspot/$1;
		break;
	}


	location / {
		if (!-e /$request_filename) {
			rewrite .* /request_router.php last;
		}

		if ($uri = /) {
			rewrite .* /request_router.php last;
		}
	}
	
	
	location ~ \.php$ {
		include c:/creativespot/dslocal/nginx/conf/fastcgi_params;
		
		fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
		fastcgi_index index.php;
		fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME 
c:/creativespot/dslocal/rollout/public_html/request_router.php;
	}

}