nginx not serving updated static files

Question

Switching from apache to nginx, and encountering something weird.

1) Say I have a file yo.txt in the document root of my site and it contains 'foo'.

curl http://localhost/yo.txt => 'foo'

2) then I alter the file to contain 'bar'

curl http://localhost/yo.txt => 'foo' (still!)

If I remove yo.txt, I get a 404. If I remove all the text, I correctly get an empty file when I curl the url.

I checked the last modified HTTP header after I modify the file, and it is correct, even though the contents of the file are stale.

I'm using the standard configuration from nginx after an apt-get install nginx.

what gives?

Possible duplicate of [Vagrant/VirtualBox/Apache2 Strange Cache Behaviour](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9479117/vagrant-virtualbox-apache2-strange-cache-behaviour) — kenorb, Dec 13 '16 at 14:04

score 15 · Answer 1 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:13

15

I'm using Vagrant. Setting sendfile to off in nginx.conf fixed the problem as found here, e.g."

sendfile off;

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:13

Community

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answered Oct 12 '12 at 18:30

Josh Nankin

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This should be marked as the correct answer - so glad I found this, was experiencing a VERY strange behavior with static files until disabling `sendfile`. – Scott Byers Jun 15 '17 at 17:38
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I like magical solutions, but anybody knows why and how this fixes the problem? – ichigolas Feb 02 '18 at 17:47
This is a [work around for a known problem with old versions of VirtualBox](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9479117/vagrant-virtualbox-apache2-strange-cache-behaviour). – Raedwald Sep 23 '19 at 16:27

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 12 '16 at 23:05

0

For me the following worked:

    expires modified 10y;

According to the docs:

The time in the “Expires” field is computed as a sum of the current time and time specified in the directive. If the modified parameter is used (0.7.0, 0.6.32) then the time is computed as a sum of the file’s modification time and the time specified in the directive.

answered Dec 12 '16 at 23:05

infografnet

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Well, nice answer. But pretty useless as long as it is not clear where (which file, where in file) to put `expires modified 10y;` – toom Jan 30 '22 at 13:20

nginx not serving updated static files

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