An example nginx conf for mogilefs and gunicorn

how_it_work.rst

Private media

Browser accesses URL of Application:

http://www.example.com/private_media/my_file.pdf

The Permissions are checked by the application backend. If Access is denied the application backend returns a 403 and thats the end of it. If Access is granted the application backend returns a special http header:

X-Accel-Redirect: /my_private_location/path/to/my_file.pdf;

Nginx in turn serves whatever is accessible from that url, bypassing the internal safeguard on the location directives. In this case it would serve:

/path/to/real/location/in/filesystem/path/to/my_file.pdf

Private media served from MogileFS

Same as general idea as above. The header might look like this:

X-Accel-Redirect: /my_private_mogilefs_location/path/to/my_file.pdf;

And nginx will serve the content from MogileFS using the path as file key:

/path/to/my_file.pdf

nginx.conf

# This config has not been tested yet!
server {
    listen 80;

    server_name     www.example.com;
    access_log      /var/log/nginx/example.com.log;

    location / {
        proxy_pass        http://127.0.0.1:1337;
        proxy_set_header  X-Real-IP  $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header  Host $http_host;
    }

    location /static {
        alias /home/examble/apps/example/live/static_collected/;
    }
    location /media {
        alias /home/examble/apps/example/live/uploads/public/;
    }

    # secure location for use with X-Accel-Redirect (http://wiki.nginx.org/XSendfile)
    location /my_private_location/ {
        internal;
        alias /path/to/real/location/in/filesystem/;
    }

    # secure location for use with X-Accel-Redirect (http://wiki.nginx.org/XSendfile)
    # using MogileFS (http://www.grid.net.ru/nginx/mogilefs.en.html)
    location /my_private_mogilefs_location/ {
        internal;
        mogilefs_tracker 192.168.2.2;
        mogilefs_domain example_domain;

        mogilefs_pass {
            proxy_pass $mogilefs_path;
            proxy_hide_header Content-Type;
            proxy_buffering off;
        }
    }
    
}

server {
    server_name  example.com whatever.other.domain.com
    rewrite ^(.*) http://www.example.com$1 permanent;
}