File issue with NGinx & PHP-FPM on separate servers

Question

I've done a bit of research on running NGinx and PHP with FastCGI on separate servers, and have successfully set it up on test virtual machines. I've ran into the problem that these articles describe...

• https://code.google.com/p/sna/wiki/NginxWithPHPFPM
• Nginx load balance with dedicated php-fpm server

...which is that in order for this setup to work, the PHP files need to be in the same directory on BOTH servers, even though the machines running the php-fpm worker is actually executing the scripts. I've tested this myself; if I remove a file 'test.php' in the document root on the NGinx server, it throws a 404 or 403 even though the file still exists on the PHP-FPM machine.

My question: is there no way around this? I know using a central storage running NFS is one solution, but I would like to avoid the performance issues associated with that.

If it helps, here are my config files:

/etc/nginx/sites-enabled/test-app.conf

upstream test-app {
    server <php-fpm-server-ip>:9001;
}

server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;

    server_name test.app.com;
    root /var/www/html;
    index index.php index.html index.htm;

    location ~ \.php$ {
        try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
        fastcgi_pass test-app;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }

}

Answer 1

If you really want to do this, remove this from nginx under your \.php location:

try_files $uri $uri/ =404;

That is what causes it to check the filesystem before passing the request off to the fcgi upstream. Also verify that the fcgi process has the root directory set properly so it can't read random php files now that nginx can't do existence checking.

Answer 2

The php files need to exist on both 'nginx server' and 'php-fpm' server Otherwise, nginx will return 404 page not found

You need to sync all files from local nginx server (file must exist but can be 0 byte in content) and back-end php server (the actual php scripts)

Or you can share files between servers using SSHFS, NFS being another. You put the php script in the local folder (php-fpm server), then you mount this folder to nginx server. In the nginx.conf , document root you point it to the mounted folder That's it , no need to sync files