fastcgi_buffering

This directive appeared in version 1.5.6.

Enables or disables buffering of responses from the FastCGI server.

When buffering is enabled, nginx receives a response from the FastCGI server as soon as possible, saving it into the buffers set by the fastcgi_buffer_size and fastcgi_buffers directives. If the whole response does not fit into memory, a part of it can be saved to a temporary file on the disk. Writing to temporary files is controlled by the fastcgi_max_temp_file_size and fastcgi_temp_file_write_size directives.

When buffering is disabled, the response is passed to a client synchronously, immediately as it is received. nginx will not try to read the whole response from the FastCGI server. The maximum size of the data that nginx can receive from the server at a time is set by the fastcgi_buffer_size directive.

Buffering can also be enabled or disabled by passing “yes” or “no” in the “X-Accel-Buffering” response header field. This capability can be disabled using the fastcgi_ignore_headers directive.