NGINX entity too large, no more

Sometimes a simple sentence can make a world of difference. It did that for my nginx configuration this morning. Since setting nginx in front of Plone, I've had an "413 entity too large" error for files bigger than 1 MB.

My configuration uses a special conf/proxy.conf file which looks like this::

# proxy.conf
proxy_redirect off;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
client_max_body_size 30m;
client_body_buffer_size 2m;
proxy_connect_timeout 90;
proxy_send_timeout 90;
proxy_read_timeout 90;
proxy_buffer_size 2m;
proxy_buffers 4 1m;
proxy_busy_buffers_size 2m;
proxy_temp_file_write_size 2m;

The wrong way
Previously my 'server' section in my nginx.conf used to look like this:

server {
listen 1.2.3.4;
server_name example.com www.example.com;
location / {
rewrite ^/(.*)$ /VirtualHostBase/http/www.example.com:80/example/plone/VirtualHostRoot/$1;
}
location /VirtualHostBase/ {
proxy_pass http://sharedhosting;
include conf/proxy.conf; #this is apparently a bad place to put this
}
error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
location = /50x.html {
root html;
}

}


The right way
So I read the following comment at the slicehost forums:

"Try moving the directive from inside the location block to just inside the server block."


So now I've moved it to "just inside the server block" so my 'server' section in my nginx.conf now looks like this:

server {
listen 1.2.3.4;
server_name example.com www.example.com;
include conf/proxy.conf; #now it works, phew!
location / {
rewrite ^/(.*)$ /VirtualHostBase/http/www.example.com:80/example/plone/VirtualHostRoot/$1;
}
location /VirtualHostBase/ {
proxy_pass http://sharedhosting;
}
error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
location = /50x.html {
root html;
}

}