nginx does not forward to my rails app - ruby-on-rails

Question

I am rather new to using nginx. I want to use it to serve static content in order to reduce the load on the rails server. It seems to be a rather simple task but I just can't find a solution that works for me.
I want nginx to serve static files which exist in the public directory inside my rails application directory. To be more precise: I got an index.html inside the directory I want to get served when entering http:/[domainname]. Instead I just get the default nginx index.html. I already checked that thin is running and when I query 127.0.0.1:3000 I get the page I want.
So here's the file called [domainname] in the sites-available directory.
upstream rails {
server 127.0.0.1:3000; #This is where thin is waiting for connections
}
# HTTP server
server {
listen 80;
server_name [domainname];
set $app /home/projektor/website/app.[domainname];
root $app/public;
# Set a limit to POST data
client_max_body_size 8M;
# Errors generated by Rails
error_page 400 /400.html;
error_page 422 /422.html;
error_page 500 504 /500.html;
# Errors generated *outside* Rails
error_page 502 #502;
error_page 503 #503;
# If the public/system/maintenance.html file exists,
# return a 503 error, that ...
if (-f $document_root/system/maintenance.html) {
return 503;
}
# ... will serve the very same file. This construct
# is needed in order to stop the request before
# handing it to Rails.
location #503 {
rewrite ^ /system/maintenance.html break;
}
# When a 502 error occurs - that is, Rails is not
# running, serve the 502.html file
location #502 {
rewrite ^ /502.html break;
}
# Add client-side caching headers to static files
#
location ~ ^/(stylesheets|javascripts|images|system/avatars) {
expires 720h;
}
# Hand over the request to Rails, setting headers
# that will be interpreted by request.remote_ip,
# request.ssl? and request.host
#
location / {
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto http;
proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
proxy_redirect off;
# If the file exists as a static file serve it directly
if (-f $request_filename) {
break;
}
# Oh yeah, hand over the request to Rails! Yay! :-D
proxy_pass http://rails;
}
}
The file is based on this one.
Thanks for your help.
Edit:
I already exchanged 127.0.0.1:3000 for 0.0.0.0:3000 in the upstream part. I also checked the the ownership of the files in sites-available and sites-enabled and they should both be ok.
I hardcoded return 503; into the location instruction and it seems that it never matches. It seems that it always matches the precreated default configuration.

Answer 1

Take a look at the Mongrel example from the try_files documentation. Something like this should work:
location / {
try_files /system/maintenance.html $uri $uri/index.html $uri.html #thin;
}
location #thin {
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto http;
proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
proxy_redirect off;
# Oh yeah, hand over the request to Rails! Yay! :-D
proxy_pass http://rails;
}

Answer 2

When I set up a recent version of NGINX, the solution to getting it to point properly to my rails app had everything to do with fully, and properly configuring it. There were a few extra steps I didn't find in the documentation. It was acting just as yours is. I don't have a clean install to go off of, but bear with me here.
I set a directory called sites-enabled in the default install location. This is a debian install from apt repository, so the install loccations are /etc/nginx and /var/nginx.
mkdir /etc/nginx/sites-enabled /etc/nginx/sites-available
Place conf file for site in sites-available/
Add this line to the bottom of /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
Look for and remove any reference that may include the DEFAULT configuration, which is telling nginx to actually load this file. Which is what gives you the nginx default index.html (/etc/nginx/conf.d/default.conf)
grep -r "default.conf" /etc/nginx
Symlink (man ln) your file in sites-available to sites-enabled.
ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/myfilename /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/myfilename
Test your configuration.
/etc/init.d/nginx configtest
Once your configuration is set up properly, restart nginx
/etc/init.d/nginx restart
I can't remember if I removed this reference or including the line in step 2 was enough. If you update or comment on this answer and give me the results, I can try to dig up the other steps I took.
I don't think the problem here is your actual configuration.