NGINX conf on WP Multisite enabled -- subdirectory -- images fail to load after updates

Question

A server with nginx and WP 3.9.1 was working properly. The nginx helper plugin was updated two days ago and now no images or zip files in the uploads directory are available in the browser or the media library. Now, if I edit the image in the media library then it shows but 'disappears' upon updating.

In looking at browser urls this is what WP is serving but fails

domain.com/chemistry/files/year/month/image.png

This url shows the image if put in manually to the browser

domain.com/chemistry/wp-content/uploads/sites/#_of_site/year/month/image.png

I've looked at the map feature of the plugin, tried to read the documents, but cannot figure out what happened and what was changed so I can fix it to get images to load properly.

Can someone point me in the correct direction?

-- disabled nginx helper plugin -- restart nginx -- reinstalled nginx helper plugin -- enabled map feature of nginx helper plugin

Answer 1

I experienced something similar few months ago. After a long time debugging I found out that all the problems were related to this well hidden option called:

ms_files_rewriting

in the wp_sitemeta table. It was active in my case, with the value 1.

When active, WordPress assumes you want to use the deprecated blogs.dir structure, where the files are served through the ms-files.php file.

I wonder if that's causing your problem.

At least check the value of this site option, and if it's active, try to set it to 0.