nginx and Drupal

From my testing, this is fixed in D7. Definitely makes for a simpler nginx configuration. Depending on your needs you don't need a rewrite or try_files at all. Can do something like this:

  location / {
    include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /var/www/$host/drupal/index.php;
    fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING q=$uri&$args;
    fastcgi_pass php;
  }

I saw your post on the nginx mailing list. It's not about try_files vs. if(-f). We have some sample configs discussed at http://groups.drupal.org/nginx and on github by omega8cc and yhager based on a thread in the Boost issue queue. They use try_files like this:

  location / {
    try_files $uri @drupal;
  }

  location @drupal {
     rewrite ^/(.*)$ /index.php?q=$1 last;
  }

  location ~ \.php$ {
    include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /var/www/$host/drupal$fastcgi_script_name;
    fastcgi_pass php;
  }

This is currently a reliable and compatible way of serving Drupal. The extra redirect thru the @drupal location is required because of Drupal's inflexibility with the query string (www.drupal.org/index.php?q=/) as you've noted. However, since it's an @ location it doesn't get tested on every static file request. As far as I know, this config works for everyone with every contrib module.

The issue seems to be fixed in D7, now in alpha release, and D7 is where all the dev energy is right now. I doubt you'll get a D6 patch at this point, since they're pretty conservative about making changes. They don't want to break things for 99.999% of users who are doing fine.

I'm like you and wanted to streamline as much as possible so I once tried to eliminate all redirects with a configuration like this:

  root /var/www/$host/public;

  location = / { # drupal doesn't like q=/
    include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /var/www/$host/drupal/index.php;
    fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING q=&$args;
    fastcgi_pass php;
  }

  location / {
    include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /var/www/$host/drupal/index.php;
    fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING q=$uri&$args;
    fastcgi_pass php;
  }

So there's an extra exact match (=) location to handle the q=/ situation, but exact match locations are a fast lookup, faster than regex locations, and since a lot of your requests are for the home page, and nginx stops scanning locations when it finds an exact match, it works fine.

And eliminating try_files $uri can be good for security. By default send everything to Drupal and then explicitly allow other files. The usual configuration with ~ \.php$ leaves the possibility of someone uploading a malicious .php file. Also having a try_files $uri location lets people view all the misc .txt, .inc, .gz, .htaccess, .svn files in every directory. So then you need something like this:

   location ~* (/\..*|settings\.php$|\.(htaccess|htpasswd|engine|inc|info|install|module|profile|pl|po|sh|.*sql|theme|tpl(\.php)?|xtmpl)$|^(Entries.*|Repository|Root|Tag|Template))$ {
        deny all;
    }

I also use two directories, one public and one for code so that most code is outside the web root, including the settings.php file. It does require a bunch of symlinks to make it work.

But then...once you add in the Boost module (the equivalent of wp-supercache for creating static cache files on disk and serving them directly through nginx), now you have to double all the Boost cache checking locations, and some quirkiness can creep in through contrib modules. I had some issues with the globalredirect module. So I don't recommend going that route.

I use a hybrid like this now (though more complex when using Boost caching):

  root /var/www/$host/public

  location / {
     rewrite ^/(.*)$ /index.php?q=$1 last;
  }

  location = /index.php {
    include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /var/www/$host/drupal/index.php;
    fastcgi_pass php;
  }

  location ~* ^.+\.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|ico|css|js)$ {
    access_log      off;
    expires         45d;
  }

  # Allow only these specific file types to be downloaded or 
  #location ~* ^.*/files/.+\.(zip|rar|7z|pdf)$ {}

  # Allow all files in this location to be downloaded
  location ~ ^.*/files/.*$ {}

  # If there's no favicon.ico don't log an error, just send empty response
  location = /favicon.ico {
    try_files /favicon.ico =204;
  }

  location = /robots.txt {}

  # 404s must go to Drupal so imagecache can create the missing images
  location ~ /files/imagecache/ {
    access_log      off;
    expires         45d;
    try_files $uri @drupal;
  }

  location @drupal {
     rewrite ^/(.*)$ /index.php?q=$1 last;
  }

#  Disable after installation
#  location = /install.php {
#    include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
#    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /var/www/$host/drupal/install.php;
#    fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING q=$uri&$args;
#    fastcgi_pass php;
#  }

#  Disable if using Drush for updatedb
#  location = /update.php {
#    include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
#    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /var/www/$host/drupal/update.php;
#    fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING q=$uri&$args;
#    fastcgi_pass php;
#  }

# Disable if using Drush for cron
#  location = /cron.php {
#    include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
#    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /var/www/$host/drupal/cron.php;
#    fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING q=$uri&$args;
#    fastcgi_pass php;
#  }

#  Disable if not using any xmlrpc services
#  location = /xmlrpc.php {
#    include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
#    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /var/www/$host/drupal/xmlrpc.php;
#    fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING q=$uri&$args;
#    fastcgi_pass php;
#  }

I suggest sticking with the extra rewrite for D6 and wait for D7.

Wordpress definitely has its own quirks. :)

All those .php files (e.g. wp-login.php, edit.php, etc.) require you to use location ~ ^.*\.php$ to catch them all, and then sometimes it uses directories (e.g. /wp-admin/) requiring an index index.php and try_files $uri/.

I prefer Drupal's way of just sending nearly everything as a query string to index.php.

like this:

At the http level define a map directive like this:

map $uri $no_slash_uri {
    ~^/(?<no_slash>.*)$ $no_slash;
}

and replace all ocurrences of index.php?q=$uri by index.php?q=$no_slash_uri. It should work for all drupal 6 based sites.