Nginx as apache reverse proxy giving 404's on .htaccess rewrite.

I'm trying to use Nginx as reverse proxy with Apache to cache static files, etc. I'm having an issue on a new install, that it's not passing on URIs to Apache. Basically I have a vBulletin forum, and I'm using vBSEO as the SEO proxy. The problem is it's generating 404s for every URL, except files that already exist.

From serverfault Adrian A.

• Could you possibly give us the relevant portion of your nginx configuration? A.t.m. we cannot guess what's wrong (although one might: using 'localhost' when not in the hosts file, so not resolving to 127.0.0.1, wrong portnumber for apache, forgetting to add a host header, etc.). Normally, It'd be something like:

  server {
      listen       80;
      server_name  www.example.com;
  
      # normally some checking here for static content which exists as file 
      # like images, js, etc, with a 'break', with at the end:
  
      location / {
          proxy_pass         http://127.0.0.1:<portnumber apache is on>/;
          proxy_redirect     off;
          proxy_set_header   Host $host;
      }
  }
  

  From Wrikken

• Well I traced it down to the SEO friendly plugin ( vBSEO ). It was producing links with .html extension and it seems nginx had it set for caching. Since those links didn't exist physically, it was producing the 404s.

  Wrikken : Ah, you do know you can let nginx check for the existance of a file and resort to proxying if not found?

  Adrian A. : Well that was already added to the rules. The basic fact was that it was proxying all together because the extension was there.
  From Adrian A.