Why does this Nginx config result in “rewrite or internal redirection cycle”

Question

I cannot figure out why this error is happening: "rewrite or internal redirection cycle while internally redirecting to "/index.html"" in nginx.conf

user www-data; worker_processes auto; pid /run/nginx.pid; 

events { worker_connections 768; # multi_accept on; } 

 http {

 sendfile on; tcp_nopush on; tcp_nodelay on; keepalive_timeout 65; types_hash_max_size 2048; # server_tokens off;

 # server_names_hash_bucket_size 64; # server_name_in_redirect off;

 include /etc/nginx/mime.types; default_type application/octet-stream;

 ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2; # Dropping SSLv3, ref: POODLE #ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;

 access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log; error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;

 gzip on; gzip_disable "msie6"; 

 upstream api { server 127.0.0.1:8080; }

 server { listen 0.0.0.0:80; root /open-ethereum-pool/www/dist; index index.html index.htm;

 server_name localhost;

 location /api { proxy_pass http://api; } 

 location / { try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html; }

 }

}

Answer 1

The issue is related to your config

server {

    listen 0.0.0.0:80; 
    root /open-ethereum-pool/www/dist; 
    index index.html index.htm;

    server_name localhost;

    location /api {
        proxy_pass http://api;
    }

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;
    }
}

Change

try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;

to

try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html =404;

This will make sure that when even index.html in not there you get a 404 and not a internal redirection cycle

Currently what is happening is below when you browse /index.html

It becomes

try_files /index.html /index.html/ /index.html;

Now if /index.html doesn't exist then your fallback option (last parameter for try_file) is /index.html. This creates internal redirection cycle. So create the index.html file and the use try_files below way to avoid such issues

try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html =404;

Answer 2

Most of the time You would want to resort to a fancy 404 not just default nginx error page.

Change

try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;

To

try_files $uri $uri/ /error.html;

Obviously you will have to place this error.html in your root directory, or even

try_files $uri $uri/ /error404/error.html;

Answer 3

In my case, I got that error because index.html file was missing at that root directory. After I added index.html file, it started working normally.