nginx proxy_pass with passenger

Question

I can't seem to make this nginx config work. I have a rails app, and I need to proxy everything under a path to a Java/Tomcat setup. I have another route (which does hit the main rails app) under lockdown and that works, but the proxy_pass doesn't; it just hits the main app.

• It seems that when I remove the lockdown location directive, it works.
• Reordering the two location directives has no effect.

The basic config:

server {
  listen 80;

  root /rails/app/public;
  rails_env development;
  passenger_enabled on;

  location /JavaApp {
    proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080/JavaApp/;
  }

  location /lockdown {
    # Have to re-enable passenger
    passenger_enabled on;
    allow 127.0.0.1;
    deny all;
  }
}

What am I doing wrong?

Answer 1

I thought I had tried every combination, but I went through a bunch more and found that this worked:

location ~ \.jsp$

Which boggled my mind because before it whined about not allowing regex in the location with proxy_pass, but I had a path in the proxy pass line... SO!

This does the trick

location ~ /JavaApp {
  proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;
}

Answer 2

Try removing passenger_enabled pn; from the top level of the server {} block and I think it will start working for you.