node.js server to return /, static files from /public/ via nginx?

i'm having a little issue with Rasmus Andersson awesome node.js EC2 template http://rsms.me/2011/03/23/ec2-wep-app-template.html

ok, the issue is

i would like the root url http://www.mydomain.com/ response to be delivered by the node.js server (which listens on port 3000)

nginx should still deliver everything static from /public/ (so nginx should look in /public/ first, if it's not there pass the request to node.js on port 3000) i.e.:

• http://www.mydomain.com/favicon.ico should response with the file from /var/mydomain/public/favicon.ico
• http://www.mydomain.com/ should be passed to node.js on port 3000
• http://www.mydomain.com/contentpage.html should be passed on to node.js on port 3000

this is my /etc/nginx/sites-available/mydomain-http config file. i know that i will have to rewrite the location / part, but i don't know what i should put in there.

thx a lot

## Access over HTTP (but not HTTPS)
server {
  listen        80;
  listen        [::]:80 default ipv6only=on;
  access_log    /var/log/nginx/access.log;
  location / {
    root        /var/m开发者_如何学运维ydomain/public;
    index       index.html;
    error_page  404 = @backend;
  }
  location @backend {
    proxy_pass          http://127.0.0.1:3000;
    proxy_set_header    X-Client-IP  $remote_addr;
  }
}

---

i'm answering this question myself as i found the solution after a lot of "oh my ...... ... i can't believe this does not work". what was missing in my case, was

error_page 403 = @backend;

in the main server block, as a request for / did not return an http 404 (file not found), but an http 403 (no access).

the issue was submitted back to the project as issue nr. 5 https://github.com/rsms/ec2-webapp/issues#issue/5