Extra spaces should not cause nginx error

[gfrankliu@…]

Shouldn't nginx just ignore those extra spaces and blank lines?

I tried below in the config of nginx 1.14.0:

server {
...

set $testvar1 "testval1";

... 300 blank lines, each with 20 spaces ...

set $testvar2 "testval2";

...
}

nginx configtest says:
nginx: [emerg] too long parameter "

..." started in

[Maxim Dounin]

Please try the following patch:

# HG changeset patch
# User Maxim Dounin <mdounin@mdounin.ru>
# Date 1532225835 -10800
#      Sun Jul 22 05:17:15 2018 +0300
# Node ID 1fd68b8ceede5ad560e4b15ccad5919b6f4e179e
# Parent  d230c797b1686c5f353295c4093a45222b811ad6
Skipping spaces in configuration files (ticket #1557).

Previously, a chunk of spaces larger than NGX_CONF_BUFFER (4096 bytes)
resulted in the "too long parameter" error during parsing such a
configuration.  This was because the code only set start and start_line
on non-whitespace characters, and hence adjacent whitespace characters
were preserved when reading additional data from the configuration file.
Fix is to always move start and start_line if the last character was
a space.

diff --git a/src/core/ngx_conf_file.c b/src/core/ngx_conf_file.c
--- a/src/core/ngx_conf_file.c
+++ b/src/core/ngx_conf_file.c
@@ -656,13 +656,14 @@ ngx_conf_read_token(ngx_conf_t *cf)
         }
 
         if (last_space) {
+
+            start = b->pos - 1;
+            start_line = cf->conf_file->line;
+
             if (ch == ' ' || ch == '\t' || ch == CR || ch == LF) {
                 continue;
             }
 
-            start = b->pos - 1;
-            start_line = cf->conf_file->line;
-
             switch (ch) {
 
             case ';':

[gfrankliu@…]

Tried 1.15.2 released this morning and the error is still there.
Manually applied above patch, and the error goes away.

[gfrankliu@…]

Tested the patch and it works.
Thanks and you can close this ticket.

[Maxim Dounin]

Thanks for testing, the patch was submitted for an internal review. Once reviewed, the patch will be committed, and then this ticket will be closed.

[Maxim Dounin <mdounin@…>]

In 7334:f17e313009b0/nginx:

Skipping spaces in configuration files (ticket #1557).

Previously, a chunk of spaces larger than NGX_CONF_BUFFER (4096 bytes)
resulted in the "too long parameter" error during parsing such a
configuration. This was because the code only set start and start_line
on non-whitespace characters, and hence adjacent whitespace characters
were preserved when reading additional data from the configuration file.
Fix is to always move start and start_line if the last character was
a space.

[Maxim Dounin]

Committed, thanks.