nginx localhost is downloading php files in browser, instead of serving them? - php

Question

There's an extremely weird thing going on that I have never seen NGINX do, and don't know why it's doing this. I have seen this issue discussed several times at SO, but I haven't found a solution that makes sense for my conf file.
Basically, when I attempt to access a php file through localhost in my browser (any browser), it downloads the file, instead of displaying it. I've read that people think it's a MIME issue, but I can't see where that is reflected in the conf. Additionally, several people said that there was a hidden file in /etc/nginx/conf.d that was overwriting settings. That is not the case here, as far as I can tell. A quick ls -al shows there's nothing in that folder. Help please? :D
server {
listen 80 default_server;
listen [::]:80 default_server ipv6only=on;
root /usr/share/nginx/html;
index index.html index.htm;
# Make site accessible from http://localhost/
server_name localhost;
location / {
# First attempt to serve request as file, then
# as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404.
try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
# Uncomment to enable naxsi on this location
# include /etc/nginx/naxsi.rules
}
# Only for nginx-naxsi used with nginx-naxsi-ui : process denied requests
#location /RequestDenied {
# proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8080;
#}
#error_page 404 /404.html;
# redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html
#
#error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
#location = /50x.html {
# root /usr/share/nginx/html;
#}
# pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
#
#location ~ \.php$ {
# fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
# # NOTE: You should have "cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0;" in php.ini
#
# # With php5-cgi alone:
# fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
# # With php5-fpm:
# fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
# fastcgi_index index.php;
# include fastcgi_params;
#}
# deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root
# concurs with nginx's one
#
#location ~ /\.ht {
# deny all;
#}
}
# another virtual host using mix of IP-, name-, and port-based configuration
#
#server {
# listen 8000;
# listen somename:8080;
# server_name somename alias another.alias;
# root html;
# index index.html index.htm;
#
# location / {
# try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
# }
#}
# HTTPS server
#
#server {
# listen 443;
# server_name localhost;
#
# root html;
# index index.html index.htm;
#
# ssl on;
# ssl_certificate cert.pem;
# ssl_certificate_key cert.key;
#
# ssl_session_timeout 5m;
#
# ssl_protocols SSLv3 TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
# ssl_ciphers "HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5 or HIGH:!aNULL:!MD5:!3DES";
# ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
#
# location / {
# try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
# }
#}

Answer 1

You have commented out all of your FastCGI handling for PHP. Nginx doesn't know how to handle PHP on its own.
Start by un-commenting that block.

Answer 2

This part of the file looks kind of relevant
# pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
#
#location ~ \.php$ {
# fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
# # NOTE: You should have "cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0;" in php.ini
#
# # With php5-cgi alone:
# fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
# # With php5-fpm:
# fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
# fastcgi_index index.php;
# include fastcgi_params;
#}
Try uncommenting it
http://blog.martinfjordvald.com/2010/07/nginx-primer/
http://wiki.nginx.org/Pitfalls
http://eksith.wordpress.com/2008/12/08/nginx-php-on-windows/

Answer 3

Do not uncomment the entire block. Not only will it fail due to having duplicate fastcgi_pass directives, but it won't work regardless. It will continue downloading the files you're requesting instead of serving them to the browser.
Derived from http://blog.martinfjordvald.com/2010/07/nginx-primer/:
location ~ \.php$ {
# fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+\.php)(/.+)$;
# NOTE: You should have "cgi.fix_pathinfo = 0;" in php.ini
# With php5-cgi alone:
# fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000;
# With php5-fpm:
fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php5-fpm.sock;
include fastcgi.conf;
# fastcgi_index index.php;
# include fastcgi_params;
}
I was able to successfully access phpMyAdmin after applying this.