How do I enable clean URLs with Nginx?

Question

I'm using Drupal 7.x. I have achieved to make it work without clean URLs.

Investigating, I have understood that I should create a vhost for each drupal site and enable clean URLs with the following code.

if (-e $ REQUEST_FILENAME) {
     rewrite ^ / (. *) $ / index.php? q = $ 1 last;
}

Alternatively, I could use this code.

location / {
         [... ]
         error_page 404 = @ drupal;
         [... ]
}

location @ drupal {
         rewrite ^ (. *) $ / index.php? q = $ 1 last;
}

However, I've also seen that without creating a vhost can enable clean URLs (like Apache). I tried on both lines in my setup but I do not get a result. When I enable clean URLs it always displays the word Nginx (The localhost).

What is the right way to enable clean URLs?

This is my configuration in /etc/nginx/sites-available/default.

server {
        listen   80; ## listen for ipv4; this line is default and implied
        listen   [::]:80 default ipv6only=on; ## listen for ipv6

        root /usr/share/nginx/www;
        index index.php index.html index.htm;

        # Make site accessible from http://localhost/
        server_name localhost;

        location / {
                # First attempt to serve request as file, then
                # as directory, then fall back to index.html
                try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;
                # Uncomment to enable naxsi on this location
                # include /etc/nginx/naxsi.rules
        }

        location /doc/ {
                alias /usr/share/doc/;
                autoindex on;
                allow 127.0.0.1;
                deny all;
        }

        location /images {
                root /usr/share;
                autoindex off;
        }
        # Only for nginx-naxsi : process denied requests
        #location /RequestDenied {
                # For example, return an error code
                #return 418;
        #}

        #error_page 404 /404.html;

        # redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html
        #
        error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
        location = /50x.html {
                root /usr/share/nginx/www;
        }

        #Pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
        #
        location ~ \.php$ {
                try_files $uri =404;
                #fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
        # NOTE: You should have "cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0;" in php.ini

                # With php5-cgi alone:
                #fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
                # With php5-fpm:
                fastcgi_pass unix:/tmp/php5-fpm.sock;
                fastcgi_index index.php;
                include fastcgi_params;
        }

        # deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root
        # concurs with nginx's one
        #
        location ~ /\.ht {
                deny all;
        }
}

I have not created any vhost on my server; neither do I know how.

Answer 1

I have next that work successfully:

  location / {
    index index.php;
    # This is cool because no php is touched for static content
    try_files $uri $uri/ @rewrite;
    expires max;
  }

  location @rewrite {
    # Some modules enforce no slash (/) at the end of the URL
    # Else this rewrite block wouldn't be needed (GlobalRedirect)
    rewrite ^/(.*)$ /index.php?q=$1;
  }

  location ~ \.php$ {
    include fastcgi_params;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /srv/www/www.example.com/public_html$fastcgi_script_name;
    fastcgi_intercept_errors on;
    fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php-fpm.sock; # fastcgi_pass unix:/tmp/php5-fpm.sock;
 }