Nested location with alias - configuration

Question

I have a directory/web app that is located outside of the web root directory of my site.
Say the site is here:
/var/www/site/htdocs/
And the external app is located here:
/var/www/apps/coolapp/
My question is how can I configure nginx to map/route all requests that are like www.mysite.com/coolapp/* (asterisk being wildcard) to the external location /var/www/apps/coolapp/? For example, www.mysite.com/coolapp/test.php should server /var/www/apps/coolapp/test.php.
I have added an alias directive in production.conf that the main nginx.conf file includes. This worked fine for everything except .php files because there is another location that is catching .php files instead. So I nested a location in with the alias to catch .php files, but now nginx is telling me it can't find the .php files "404 File Not Found". Here is what production.conf currently looks like
server {
listen 80;
listen 443 ssl;
ssl_certificate /blah/blah/blah;
ssl_certificate_key /blah/blah/blah;
ssl_protocols blah blah blah;
ssl_ciphers blahblahblah;
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers blahblah;
access_log /var/log/nginx/www.mysite.com-access.log;
error_log /var/log/nginx/www.mysite.com-error.log error;
server_name mysite.com www.mysite.com;
root /var/www/site/htdocs;
include conf/magento_rewrites.conf;
include conf/magento_security.conf;
include /var/www/site/nginx/*.conf;
#-------CODE IN QUESTION-------
location /coolapp/ {
alias /var/www/apps/coolapp/;
location ~ \.php {
# Copied from "# PHP Handler" below
fastcgi_param MAGE_RUN_CODE default;
fastcgi_param MAGE_RUN_TYPE store;
fastcgi_param HTTPS $fastcgi_https;
rewrite_log on;
# By default, only handle fcgi without caching
include conf/magento_fcgi.conf;
}
}
# PHP handler
location ~ \.php {
## Catch 404s that try_files miss
if (!-e $request_filename) { rewrite / /index.php last; }
## Store code is defined in administration > Configuration > Manage Stores
fastcgi_param MAGE_RUN_CODE default;
fastcgi_param MAGE_RUN_TYPE store;
fastcgi_param HTTPS $fastcgi_https;
rewrite_log on;
# By default, only handle fcgi without caching
include conf/magento_fcgi.conf;
}
# 404s are handled by front controller
location #magefc {
rewrite ^(.*) /index.php?$query_string last;
}
# Last path match hands to magento or sets global cache-control
location / {
## Maintenance page overrides front controller
index index.html index.php;
try_files $uri $uri/ #magefc;
expires 24h;
}
}
conf/magento_fcgi.conf looks like this:
fastcgi_pass phpfpm;
## Tell the upstream who is making the request
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_redirect off;
# Ensure the admin panels have enough time to complete large requests ie: report generation, product import/export
proxy_read_timeout 1600s;
# Ensure PHP knows when we use HTTPS
fastcgi_param HTTPS $fastcgi_https;
## Fcgi Settings
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_connect_timeout 120;
fastcgi_send_timeout 320s;
fastcgi_read_timeout 1600s;
fastcgi_buffer_size 128k;
fastcgi_buffers 512 64k;
fastcgi_busy_buffers_size 128k;
fastcgi_temp_file_write_size 256k;
fastcgi_intercept_errors off;
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /var/www/apps/coolapp$fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_NAME $fastcgi_script_name;
# nginx will buffer objects to disk that are too large for the buffers above
fastcgi_temp_path /tmpfs/nginx/tmp 1 2;
#fastcgi_keep_conn on; # NGINX 1.1.14
expires off; ## Do not cache dynamic content
Here are some errors messages I pulled from error.log
2014/02/28 11:10:17 [error] 9215#0: *933 connect() failed (111: Connection refused) while connecting to upstream, ................. client: x.x.x.x, server: mysite.com, request: "GET /coolapp/test.php HTTP/1.1", upstream: "fastcgi://[::1]:9000", host: "www.mysite.com"
2014/02/28 11:10:17 [error] 9215#0: *933 FastCGI sent in stderr: "Primary script unknown" while reading response header from upstream, client: x.x.x.x, server: mysite.com, request: "GET /coolapp/test.php HTTP/1.1", upstream: "fastcgi://127.0.0.1:9000", host: "www.mysite.com"
2014/02/28 11:11:59 [error] 9220#0: *1193 FastCGI sent in stderr: "Primary script unknown" while reading response header from upstream, client: x.x.x.x, server: mysite.com, request: "GET /coolapp/test.php HTTP/1.1", upstream: "fastcgi://127.0.0.1:9000", host: "www.mysite.com"
Does anyone see what I'm doing wrong?

Answer 1

This appears to have been fixed in a newer version. As long as SCRIPT_FILENAME is set to $request_filename, it should work as expected. (This differs from previous versions, where $request_filename wouldn't work in all cases.) Additionally, you need to omit any try_files directive in the inner location block. Re-evaluating $uri appears to throw off $request_filename.

Answer 2

Ok, second read after coffee. Get the SCRIPT_FILENAME out of the included fastcgi configuration and set it in both location blocks. If this doesn't fix things then in the coolapp location hardcode the doc root path and see if that fixes things.