I originally posted this question on SO, but it might of course be more logical to ask here;

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8031471/nginx-location-directive-authentication-happening-in-wrong-location-block

I'm flummoxed.

I have a server that is primarily running couchdb over ssl (using nginx to proxy the ssl connection) but also has to serve some apache stuff.

Basically I want everything that DOESN'T start /www to be sent to the couchdb backend. If a url DOES start /www then it should be mapped to the local apache server on port 8080.

My config below works with the exception that I'm getting prompted for authentication on the /www paths as well. I'm a bit more used to configuring Apache than nginx, so I suspect I'm mis-understanding something, but if anyone can see what is wrong from my configuration (below) I'd be most grateful.

To clarify my use scenario;

https://my-domain.com/www/script.cgi should be proxied to http://localhost:8080/script.cgi
https://my-domain.com/anythingelse should be proxied to http://localhost:5984/anythingelse

ONLY the second should require authentication. It is the authentication issue that is causing problems - as I mentioned, I am being challenged on https://my-domain.com/www/anything as well :-(

Here's the config, thanks for any insight.

server {
listen 443;
ssl on;

# Any url starting /www needs to be mapped to the root
# of the back end application server on 8080

location ^~ /www/ {
proxy_pass http://localhost:8080/;
proxy_redirect off;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;

}

# Everything else has to be sent to the couchdb server running on
# port 5984 and for security, this is protected with auth_basic
# authentication.

location / {

auth_basic "Restricted";
auth_basic_user_file /path-to-passwords;

proxy_pass http://localhost:5984;
proxy_redirect off;
proxy_set_header Host $host;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Ssl on;

}
}

Thanks for some pointers - I'm not sure how I can resolve this correctly.