An Nginx configuration for MediaWiki ==================================== --- date: "2015-05-19" --- There are [several][0] [example][1] [Nginx][2] [configurations][3] [for][4] [MediaWiki][5] floating around the web. Many of them don't block the user from accessing things like `/serialized/`. Many of them also [don't correctly handle][faq] a wiki page named `FAQ`, since that is a name of a file in the MediaWiki root! In fact, the configuration used on the official Nginx Wiki has both of those issues! [0]: http://wiki.nginx.org/MediaWiki [1]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/MediaWiki#Nginx [2]: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Short_URL/wiki/Page_title_--_nginx_rewrite--root_access [3]: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Short_URL/Page_title_-_nginx,_Root_Access,_PHP_as_a_CGI_module [4]: http://wiki.nginx.org/RHEL_5.4_%2B_Nginx_%2B_Mediawiki [5]: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11080666/mediawiki-on-nginx [faq]: https://labs.parabola.nu/issues/725 This is because most of the configurations floating around basically try to pass all requests through, and blacklist certain requests, either denying them, or passing them through to `index.php`. It's my view that blacklisting is inferior to whitelisting in situations like this. So, I developed the following configuration that instead works by whitelisting certain paths. root /path/to/your/mediawiki; # obviously, change this line index index.php; location / { try_files /var/empty @rewrite; } location /images/ { try_files $uri $uri/ @rewrite; } location /skins/ { try_files $uri $uri/ @rewrite; } location /api.php { try_files /var/empty @php; } location /api.php5 { try_files /var/empty @php; } location /img_auth.php { try_files /var/empty @php; } location /img_auth.php5 { try_files /var/empty @php; } location /index.php { try_files /var/empty @php; } location /index.php5 { try_files /var/empty @php; } location /load.php { try_files /var/empty @php; } location /load.php5 { try_files /var/empty @php; } location /opensearch_desc.php { try_files /var/empty @php; } location /opensearch_desc.php5 { try_files /var/empty @php; } location /profileinfo.php { try_files /var/empty @php; } location /thumb.php { try_files /var/empty @php; } location /thumb.php5 { try_files /var/empty @php; } location /thumb_handler.php { try_files /var/empty @php; } location /thumb_handler.php5 { try_files /var/empty @php; } location /wiki.phtml { try_files /var/empty @php; } location @rewrite { rewrite ^/(.*)$ /index.php?title=$1&$args; } location @php { # obviously, change this according to your PHP setup include fastcgi.conf; fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php-fpm/wiki.sock; } We are now using this configuration on [ParabolaWiki](https://wiki.parabola.nu/), but with an alias for `location = /favicon.ico` to the correct file in the skin, and with FastCGI caching for PHP. The only thing I don't like about this is the `try_files /var/emtpy` bits--surely there is a better way to have it go to one of the `@` location blocks, but I couldn't figure it out.