Nginx seem to be ignoring try_files order - ruby-on-rails

Question

Not sure if I'm misunderstanding how try_files work, or if there's something wrong with my config. I'm running Rails on Puma behind Nginx. I'm trying to serve items in my /public folder, after which it should send the requests to Puma.
So, if I go to
https://domain.com/sitemap.xml
it should serve /var/www/live/current/public/sitemap.xml. Then, https://domain.com/rails_index_page should be served from Puma.
The latter works fine, and I can access https://domain.com/public/sitemap.xml, but I would like to access it via https://domain.com/sitemap.xml
My config file looks as follows:
upstream live {
server unix:///var/www/live/shared/puma.sock;
}
server {
client_body_buffer_size 10K;
client_header_buffer_size 1k;
client_max_body_size 8m;
large_client_header_buffers 4 16k;
client_body_timeout 12;
client_header_timeout 12;
keepalive_timeout 15;
send_timeout 10;
server_tokens off;
listen 443;
ssl on;
ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/ssl-bundle.crt;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/server.key;
ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:20m;
ssl_session_timeout 10m;
ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
ssl_ciphers ECDH+AESGCM:ECDH+AES256:ECDH+AES128:DH+3DES:!ADH:!AECDH:!MD5;
ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
server_name domain.com; # change to match your URL
root /var/www/live/current/public; # I assume your app is located at this location
try_files $uri #live;
location #live {
add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000";
gzip on;
gzip_static on;
gzip_vary on;
gzip_proxied any;
gzip_comp_level 8;
gzip_buffers 16 8k;
gzip_http_version 1.1;
gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/x-javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript;
proxy_pass http://live; # match the name of upstream directive which is defined above
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
}
location ~ ^/assets/ {
expires 1y;
add_header Cache-Control public;
root /var/www/live/current/public;
gzip on;
gzip_static on;
gzip_vary on;
gzip_proxied any;
gzip_comp_level 8;
gzip_buffers 16 8k;
gzip_http_version 1.1;
gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/x-javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript;
add_header Last-Modified "";
add_header ETag "";
}
set $rootUrl "/var/www/live/current";
location ~* \.(?:ico)$ {
root $rootUrl;
expires 30d;
add_header Cache-Control public;
access_log off;
}
# css and js are tokenized
location ~* \.(?:css|js) {
root $rootUrl;
expires max;
add_header Cache-Control public;
access_log off;
}
# nginx gzip_static does not add Vary header for fonts.
location ~* \.(?:eot|ttf|svg)$ {
root $rootUrl;
expires max;
add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin *;
add_header Vary Accept-Encoding;
add_header Cache-Control public;
access_log off;
}
# woff fonts should not be zipped.
location ~* \.(?:woff)$ {
root $rootUrl;
add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin *;
expires max;
add_header Cache-Control public;
access_log off;
}
# tokenized images can be cached forever
location ~* "\.([a-z0-9]{8})\.(?:gif|png|jpe?g)$" {
root $rootUrl;
expires max;
add_header Cache-Control public;
access_log off;
add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin *;
}
# non tokenized images only cache for 1 week as they are in my context subject to change.
location ~* \.(?:gif|png|jpe?g)$ {
add_header Access-Control-Allow-Origin *;
root $rootUrl;
expires 1w;
add_header Cache-Control public;
access_log off;
}
}
I'm sure the config file can be updated/optimised quite a bit, so please don't shout at me toooo much for that. :)

Answer 1

Does adding a default location block help? Something like
location / {
try_files $uri #live;
root ... ;
}
Try files is valid in the server context, but I don't know what order location directives are matched (and fall through to the server default)
Apologies for no formatting, I'm on mobile, I'll fix it up if it helps.