I have an instance of nginx running which serves several websites. The first is a status message on the server's IP address. The second is an admin console on admin.domain.com. These work great. Now I'd like all other domain requests to go to a single index.php - I have loads of domains and subdomains and it's impractical to list them all in an nginx config.

So far I've tried setting server_name to * but that failed as an invalid wildcard. *.* works until I add the other server blocks, then I guess it conflicts with them.

Is there a way to run a catch-all server block in nginx after other sites have been defined?

N.B. I'm not a spammer, these are genuine sites with useful content, they're just powered by the same CMS from a database!

8 Answers

Change listen option to this in your catch-all server block. (Add default_server) this will take all your non-defined connections (on the specified port).

listen 80 default_server; 

if you want to push everything to index.php if the file or folder does not exist;

try_files $uri /$uri /index.php; 

Per the docs, It can also be set explicitly which server should be default, with the **default_server** parameter in the listen directive

As a convention, the underscore is used as a server name for default servers.

From

In catch-all server examples the strange name “_” can be seen:

server { listen 80 default_server; server_name _; return 444; } 

There is nothing special about this name, it is just one of a myriad of >invalid domain names which never intersect with any real name. Other >invalid names like “--” and “!@#” may equally be used.

Note that server_name _; alone is not enough. The above example only works because of default_server in the listen directive.

This will work:

server_name ~^(.+)$ 

Only 1 server directive

From Nginx listen Docs

The default_server parameter, if present, will cause the server to become the default server for the specified address:port pair. If none of the directives have the default_server parameter then the first server with the address:port pair will be the default server for this pair.

If you only have 1 server directive, that will handle all request, you don't need to set anything.

Multiple server directive

If you want to match all request with specified server directive, just add default_server parameter to listen, Nginx will use this server directive as default.

server { listen 80 default_server; } 

About server_name _;

From Nginx Docs

In catch-all server examples the strange name “_” can be seen:

server { listen 80 default_server; server_name _; return 444; } 

There is nothing special about this name, it is just one of a myriad of invalid domain names which never intersect with any real name. Other invalid names like “--” and “!@#” may equally be used.

It doesn't matter what server_name you set, it is just an invalid domain name.

For me somehow define default_server was not working. I solved it by

server_name ~^.*$ 

using regular expression of all.

Now you can use mask:

server { listen 80; server_name *.example.org; ... } server { listen 80; server_name mail.*; ... } 

Look more here:

If you also want to catch requests with empty Host header (which is allowed in HTTP/1.0) you can use both regex and empty server_name:

server { listen 80; server_name ~. ""; } 

Try $http_host

server { server_name $http_host; }