Laravel 5 - Nginx/PHP config issue - php

Question

I'm having an issue where when I go to the /public directory it shows the Laravel app as normal, but navigating away to any other page results in it saying
No input file specified.
I am using an Nginx server with PHP 5.5.9 FPM.
I've scoured google for the last 4 hours or so, looking at every tutorial and stackoverflow page for rewriting issues in Laravel however they all yield the same result.
I've even set all the files and folders to 777 so I could see if it was some sort of permissions issue. I've checked the Laravel config and it's all set, I've no idea what is wrong.
Can anyone point me in the right direction?
The last config I tried is below:
server {
listen 80 default_server;
root /usr/share/sites/base;
index index.php
server_name localhost;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
include fastcgi_params;
}
}
I have also tried many others such as:
server {
listen 80;
server_name domain.com;
root /usr/share/sites/base;
index index.php;
location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
}
if (!-d $request_filename) {
rewrite ^/(.+)/$ /$1 permanent;
}
location ~* \.php$ {
# Server PHP config.
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
fastcgi_index index.php;
fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(.*)$;
include /etc/nginx/fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
}
location ~ /\.ht {
deny all;
}
}

Answer 1

The error "No input files specified" will nearly always be related to the fact that the wrong path was sent to php.
Looking at your 'last config tried' I can see that fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAMEis not defined in your php location. You should first begin by defining it in the location :
location ~ \.php$ {
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name
}
Furthermore you say that you can reach the app so this means that index.php is working but not when you change page. So the problem should also come from /index.php?$args. Indeed, using this line if I try to reach yourserver.com/test and if 'test' is not a file in your root path nginx will then try request /index.php? (I had this probem). You should try only with /index.php.
EDIT : The solution was that root directive should point to the Laravel public folder, in that case /usr/share/sites/base/public.