Warm cache without returning data to requestor?

[kyledrake]

I'm using this code to this to warm the cache:

  location /:cache/warm {
    rewrite ^/:cache/warm(/.*)$ $1;
    root /home/web;
    slowfs_cache        sites;
    slowfs_cache_key    $1;
    slowfs_cache_valid  15d;
    break;
  }

Which works great, but it also returns the entire file. If I want to warm up a lot of large files, this will go much slower.

I tried adding return 200 "ok"; to the location block:

  location /:cache/warm {
    rewrite ^/:cache/warm(/.*)$ $1;
    root /home/web;
    slowfs_cache        sites;
    slowfs_cache_key    $1;
    slowfs_cache_valid  15d;
    return 200 "ok";
    break;
  }

But when I do this, the file doesn't get cached.

Is there a sneaky way to cache the file without serving it?

[runningman84]

what about calling using the head method? For example curl -I http://localhost/... might help.