Nginx 1 fastcgi sent in stderr: “primary script unknown”

This is my first time using nginx but i am more than familiar with linux and apache I am using an existing project and when ever I am trying to see the index.php I get a 404 File not found.

Here is the access.log entry.

2013/06/19 16:23:23 [error] 2216#0: *1 FastCGI sent in stderr: "Primary script unknown" while reading response header from upstream, client: 127.0.0.1, server: localhost, request: "GET /index.php HTTP/1.1", upstream: "fastcgi://127.0.0.1:9000", host: "www.ordercloud.lh"

And here is the sites-available file.

server {
    set $host_path "/home/willem/git/console/www";
    access_log  /www/logs/console-access.log  main;

    server_name  console.ordercloud;
    root   $host_path/htdocs;
    set $yii_bootstrap "index.php";

    charset utf-8;

    location / {
        index  index.html $yii_bootstrap;
        try_files $uri $uri/ /$yii_bootstrap?$args;
    }

    location ~ ^/(protected|framework|themes/\w+/views) {
        deny  all;
    }

    #avoid processing of calls to unexisting static files by yii
    location ~ \.(js|css|png|jpg|gif|swf|ico|pdf|mov|fla|zip|rar)$ {
        try_files $uri =404;
    }

    # pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
    #
    location ~ \.php {
        fastcgi_split_path_info  ^(.+\.php)(.*)$;

        #let yii catch the calls to unexising PHP files
        set $fsn /$yii_bootstrap;
        if (-f $document_root$fastcgi_script_name){
            set $fsn $fastcgi_script_name;
        }

        fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
        include fastcgi_params;
        fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  $document_root$fsn;

        #PATH_INFO and PATH_TRANSLATED can be omitted, but RFC 3875 specifies them for CGI
        fastcgi_param  PATH_INFO        $fastcgi_path_info;
        fastcgi_param  PATH_TRANSLATED  $document_root$fsn;
    }

    location ~ /\.ht {
        deny  all;
    }
}

My /home/willem/git/console is owned by www-data:www-data (my web user running php etc) and I have given it 777 permissions out of frustration...

My best guess is that something is wrong with the config, but I can't figure it out...

UPDATE So I moved it to /var/www/ and used a much more basic config:

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

    root /var/www/;
    index index.html index.htm;

    # Make site accessible from http://localhost/
    server_name console.ordercloud;

    location / {
        root           /var/www/console/frontend/www/;
                fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
                fastcgi_index  index.php;
                fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  /var/www;
            include        fastcgi_params;
    }

    location ~ \.(js|css|png|jpg|gif|swf|ico|pdf|mov|fla|zip|rar)$ {
            try_files $uri =404;
        }

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

}

Also if I call localhost/console/frontend/www/index.php I get a 500 PHP which means it is serving there. It just isn't serving off console.ordercloud ...

The error message “primary script unknown” is almost always related to a wrongly set SCRIPT_FILENAME in the nginx fastcgi_param directive (or incorrect permissions, see other answers).

You’re using an if in the configuration you posted first. Well it should be well known by now that if is evil and often produces problems.

Setting the root directive within a location block is bad practice, of course it works.

You could try something like this

server {
    location / {
        location ~* \.php$ {
            include fastcgi_params;
            fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
            fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
            try_files $uri @yii =404;
        }
    }
    location @yii {
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$yii_bootstrap;
    }
}

Please note the above configuration is untested You should execute nginx -t before applying it to check for problems that nginx can detect right away.