Nginx default page and root webserver directive - linux

Question

I have a small embedded Linux device running Nginx. I can connect to it over the network and access the endpoints on a PC in Chrome or Firefox. My default page contains an HTML tag that points to "loading.jpeg", which is on the device at /tmp/nginx/loading.jpeg. I can type in the browser: http://192.168.0.4/loading.jpeg and see my image. I can also visit the endpoint that renders html and see my image rendered properly.
Now I want to be able to visit the root page: http://192.168.0.4/ in a browser and redirect that to my default page that should render the html and show the image. The problem is that if I set a page for the default "/" location, my webserver root directive pointing to /tmp/nginx no longer works. So I get my page displayed, but the loading.jpeg image is not found. I've tried redirecting the root request to my default page, but that also breaks the webserver root.
How can I render a default webpage for Nginx, while also having my webserver root honored? Thank you.
This does not work ( webserver root is broken - though expected default webpage is shown ):
location / {
default_type text/html;
content_by_lua_file /sbin/http/serve_stream.lua;
## The streaming endpoint
location /streaming {
default_type text/html;
content_by_lua_file /sbin/http/serve_stream.lua;
}
Here is my current nginx.conf without a redirect:
## Setup server to handle URI requests
server {
# Setup the root
root /tmp/nginx;
## Port
listen 80; ## Default HTTP
## Android phones from Ice Cream Sandwich will try and get a response from
server_name
clients3.google.com
clients.l.google.com
connectivitycheck.android.com
apple.com
captive.apple.com;
## We want to allow POSTing URI's with filenames with extensions in them
## and nginx does not have a "NOT MATCH" location rule - so we catch all
## and then selectively disable ones we don't want and proxy pass the rest
location / {
# For Android - Captive Portal
location /generate_204 {
return 204;
}
# For iOS - CaptivePortal
if ($http_user_agent ~* (CaptiveNetworkSupport) ) {
return 200;
}
## Raw WebSocket
location /ws {
lua_socket_log_errors off;
lua_check_client_abort on;
default_type text/html;
content_by_lua_file /sbin/http/websocket.lua;
}
## The streaming endpoint
location /streaming {
default_type text/html;
content_by_lua_file /sbin/http/serve_stream.lua;
}
## We can have file extensions in POSTing of /blahendpoints for filesystem
## control HTTP commands
location ~ "\.(txt|bin)$" {
...
}
}
}

Answer 1

There are a number of solutions. An exact match location block with a rewrite ... last is quite efficient:
location = / {
rewrite ^ /some.html last;
}
See this document for more.