Nginx Reverse Proxy – Upstream Response Buffered to a Temporary File

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I have a rather large and slow (complex data, complex frontend) web application build in RoR and served by Puma with nginx as reverse proxy.
Looking at the nginx error log, I see quite a few entries like:

2014/04/08 09:46:08 [warn] 20058#0: *819237 an upstream response is buffered to a temporary file 
    /var/lib/nginx/proxy/8/47/0000038478 while reading upstream, 
    client: 5.144.169.242, server: engagement-console.foo.it, 
    request: "GET /elements/pending?customer_id=2&page=2 HTTP/1.0", 
    upstream: "http://unix:///home/deployer/apps/conversationflow/shared/sockets/puma.sock:/elements/pending?customer_id=2&page=2", 
    host: "ec.reputationmonitor.it", 
    referrer: "http://ec.foo.it/elements/pending?customer_id=2&page=3"

I am rather curious as it's very unlikely that the page remains the same for different users and different user interactions, and I would not think that buffering the response on disk is necessary/useful.

I know about proxy_max_temp_file_size and setting it to 0, but it seems to me a little bit awkward (my proxy tries to buffer but has no file where to buffer to… how can that be faster?).

My questions are:

  1. How can I remove the [warn] and avoid buffering responses? Is it better to turn off proxy_buffering or to set proxy_max_temp_file_size to 0? Why?

  2. If nginx buffers a response: When does it serve the buffered response, to whom, and why?

  3. Why nginx turns proxy_buffering on by default and then [warn]s you if it actually buffers a response?

  4. When does a response trigger that option? When it takes > some seconds (how many?) to serve the response? Is this configurable?

TIA, ngw.

Best Answer

  1. How can I remove the [warn] and avoid buffering responses? Is it better to turn off proxy_buffering or set proxy_max_temp_file_size to 0? Why?

You should set proxy_max_temp_file_size to 0 in order to remove it. The proxy_buffering directive isn't directly related to the warning. You can switch it off to stop any buffering at all but that isn't recommended in general (unless it's needed for Comet).

  1. If nginx buffers a response when does it serve the buffered response, to whom and why?

It serves the response immediately, but a client usually has a much slower connection and can't consume the response data as fast as it is produced by your application. Nginx tries to buffer the whole response in order to release your application ASAP.

See also: http://aosabook.org/en/nginx.html

  1. Why nginx turns proxy_buffering on by default and then [warn]s you if it actually buffers a response?

As I already mentioned, the proxy_buffering isn't directly related to the warning. It's generally needed for optimized proxy operations and turning it off degrades performance and throughput.

Nginx only warns you when a response doesn't fit into configured memory buffers. You may ignore the warning if it's ok for you.

  1. When does a response triggers that option? When it takes > than some seconds (how many?) to serve the response? Is this configurable?

It triggers when memory buffers are full. Please, look at the docs, the whole mechanism is explained: http://nginx.org/r/proxy_max_temp_file_size

You may want to increase memory buffers.

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