Category:Nginx

nginx (pronounced “engine-x”) is an open source Web server and a reverse proxy server for HTTP, SMTP, POP3 and IMAP protocols, with a strong focus on high concurrency, performance and low memory usage. It is licensed under a BSD-like license and it runs on Unix, Linux, BSD, Mac OS X, Solaris, AIX and Microsoft Windows.^[1]

Installing Nginx on Fedora (RPM)

This page will explain how I configured nginx for my WordPress sites.

My configuration prior to migrating to nginx was built on two servers as following:

Installing needed components

yum -y install nginx php-fpm

php-fpm

We will be using socket to connect to php-fpm, so you will need to change the default configuration to create a socket opposed to TCP.

vim /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf

Around line 12, change listen from 127.0.0.1:9000 to /var/run/php-fpm.socket so it looks like:

listen = /var/run/php-fpm.socket

Then around line 39, change the user and group to nginx

user = nginx
group = nginx

Then start it:

chkconfig php-fpm on
service php-fpm start

Firewall (IPTables)

To open normal web traffic for all network cards add the below to /etc/sysconfig/iptables:

-A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m tcp -p tcp --dport 80 -j ACCEPT

Or to restrict connections to a single network card and IP address, add:

-A INPUT -m state --state NEW -m udp -p udp -i eth1 -s 10.176.228.120 --dport 80 -j ACCEPT

Once done, restart iptables

service iptables restart

Log Rotation

/etc/logrotate.d/nginx:

/var/log/nginx/*log {
    weekly
    rotate 104
    dateext
    missingok
    notifempty
    olddir /var/log/nginx/archive
    compress
    sharedscripts
    postrotate
        /etc/init.d/nginx reopen_logs
    endscript
}

Installing Nginx on Fedora (Source - SVN)

The below will walk you threw installing Nginx from Subversion on a Fedora system. With minor modification, the below instructions should also work for other flavors of Linux/Unix.

To start out with, confirm you have the needed prerequisites installed.

yum -y install gcc libxslt-devel gd-devel GeoIP-devel subversion

After you install the needed software, you can start getting ready to compile the software. I always build source files in /var/src, you may choose a different location if you wish.

cd /var/src
svn checkout svn://svn.nginx.org/nginx/trunk nginx
cd nginx/
ln auto/configure configure

Next you need to configure Nginx for your setup. The below is a pretty generic/basic setup with the gzip_static module, SSL module & the stub_status module.

./configure --user=nginx --group=nginx --prefix=/usr/local --conf-path=/etc/nginx/nginx.conf \
--error-log-path=/var/log/nginx/error.log --http-log-path=/var/log/nginx/access.log --pid-path=/var/run/nginx.pid \
--with-http_gzip_static_module --with-http_ssl_module --with-http_stub_status_module

Now make and install it.

make && make install

After you have installed Nginx, you need to start it. To do this on Fedora, create the Nginx INIT script into /etc/init.d named as nginx.

chmod 755 /etc/init.d/nginx
chkconfig --add nginx
chkconfig nginx on
adduser nginx
groups nginx
service nginx start

Upgrading Nginx on Fedora from Source (SVN)

cd /var/src/nginx/
rm -rf *
svn update
ln auto/configure configure
./configure --user=nginx --group=nginx --prefix=/usr/local --conf-path=/etc/nginx/nginx.conf \
--error-log-path=/var/log/nginx/error.log --http-log-path=/var/log/nginx/access.log --pid-path=/var/run/nginx.pid \
--with-http_gzip_static_module --with-http_ssl_module --with-http_stub_status_module
make && make install && kill -USR2 $( cat /var/run/nginx.pid )
ps -eaf |grep "nginx: " |grep -v "grep"

kill -WINCH $( cat /var/run/nginx.pid.oldbin )

kill -QUIT $( cat /var/run/nginx.pid.oldbin )

Nginx Configuration Options

• expires - Controls whether the response should be marked with an expiry time, and if so, what time that is.
• gzip - This module allows for on-the-fly gzip compression. See also Gzip pre-compression module.
• gzip pre-compression - Before serving a file from disk to a gzip-enabled client, this module will look for a precompressed file in the same location that ends in ".gz".

Nginx Proxy Configuration Options

A Very Simple Nginx Proxy Setup

In the below example, you need to set nginx-ip-here & ip-address-of-your-server.

server { 
    #Turns access log off
    access_log off;

    #Set this to the IP on the nginx server you want to represent this proxy
    listen nginx-ip-here:80;

    #Matches the requested hostname
    server_name your-hostname.com www.your-hostname.com;

    location / {
        # Tells the destination server the IP of the visitor (some take X-Real-IP, 
        # some take X-Forwarded-For as their header of choice
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr;
        # Tells the destination server which hostname you want
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        # Performs a Proxy Pass to that server
        proxy_pass http://ip-address-of-your-server;
    }
}

Multiple Server Configuration (with two domains)

upstream  www.domain1.com  {
       server   192.168.10.11:80;
       server   192.168.10.12:80;
}

server {
       listen  80;
       server_name  www.domain1.com;

       location / {
                proxy_pass         http://www.domain1.com;
                proxy_set_header   Host             $host;
                proxy_set_header   X-Real-IP        $remote_addr;
                proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-For  $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
       }
}

upstream  www.domain2.com  {
       server   192.168.10.21:80;
       server   192.168.10.22:80;
}

server {
       listen  80;
       server_name  www.domain2.com;

       location / {
                proxy_pass         http://www.domain2.com;
                proxy_set_header   Host             $host;
                proxy_set_header   X-Real-IP        $remote_addr;
                proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-For  $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
       }
       access_log  /usr/local/nginx/logs/domain2.log  www;
}

Controlling Nginx

Changing Configuration

After updating the configuration of Nginx, you can send a HUP signal to the master process to have Nginx reload the configuration. ^[2]

nginx -s reload

Rotating Nginx's Log files

Upgrading Nginx's binaries

References

1. ↑ nginx.org - Retrieved 2011-10-15.
2. ↑ Nginx.org - Controlling nginx - Reconfiguration - Retrieved 2012-02-18.