intermittent problems reaching files (whether served via php or not)

Wed Nov 19 14:04:38 UTC 2014

having difficulty to serve simple video files here (for playback in a
browser via video-js or other player). even without the video player there
are problems.
i have tested access to the video file both when the file is served from
within the php framework i am using (elgg.org) and also directly from a
public location on the webserver. in some circumstances the file 'might'
play and in others i see a variety of different outcomes - and i am not
aware of the causes of any of the behavior patterns.

when accessing the following file (which is not being served via PHP
handling, it is just a directly accessed static file, served from nginx)
firefox i am offered the option to view or download the file (as expected):

http://www.ureka.org/mod/multimedia/Bush%20Caught%20Lying%20About%20September%2011th%20-%20YouTube%20%5B360p%5D.flv

when i access the same file from chromium i am forwarded to the homepage of
my website.
when i access the same file from curl in the terminal here, i see:

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Server: nginx
Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2014 13:31:28 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Content-Length: 178
Connection: keep-alive
Location:
https://www.ureka.org/mod/multimedia/Bush%20Caught%20Lying%20About%20September%2011th%20-%20YouTube%20%5B360p%5D.flv
Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubdomains
X-Frame-Options: DENY
X-UA-Compatible: IE=Edge
X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN

-----

when i run curl to access the same file being served through elgg and php i
see:

 curl -i
https://www.ureka.org/file/download/9660/bush%20caught%20lying%20about%20september%2011th%20-%20youtube%20%5B360p%5D.flv
HTTP/1.1 302 Moved Temporarily
Server: nginx
Date: Wed, 19 Nov 2014 13:29:59 GMT
Content-Type: text/html
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Connection: keep-alive
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.5.17
Set-Cookie: Elgg=gfjvl4tdrb30sqpasmketmmm22; path=/
Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT
Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0,
pre-check=0
Pragma: no-cache
Location: https://www.ureka.org/
X-Cache-Debug:
/file/download/9660/bush%20caught%20lying%20about%20september%2011th%20-%20youtube%20%5B360p%5D.flv

<html>
<head><title>301 Moved Permanently</title></head>
<body bgcolor="white">
<center><h1>301 Moved Permanently</h1></center>
<hr><center>nginx</center>
</body>
</html>

----

does anyone know why there are so many variations of outcomes here? and what
might be the reason why the file is not being consistently return with a 200
code? (or other equivalent success code).
the end result is that i am unable to play flv and other files from my
webserver via video-js and other players.
i have spoken with the server host about this and they did not identify that
any of their actions would cause this to occur.
any help is greatly appreciated.
thanks

Posted at Nginx Forum: http://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,254921,254921#msg-254921