Nginx (pronounced Engine-X) is a russian open source httpd server originally written by Igor Sysoev back in 2005. Nginx is a very light weight httpd server and reverse proxy. It is estimated that approx. 3 per cent of all web servers run nginx. In Russia the number is as high as 20 percent, including some of their biggest web sites. Nginx is also used by Wordpress.com and 4chan.

Why use Nginx instead of Apache or Lighty? Nginx should be fast. I mean FAST. Fast in a way of over 10000 concurrent requests / sec per server. Now that's fast!

I have wanted to screw 'round with Nginx for a while, so here goes nothing!

How to install Nginx on your Linux box

Nginx can be downloaded from www.nginx.net. Simple web page displays the latest distribution packages and small introduction. Further instructions can be found from Nginx Wiki.

I installed Nginx on my CentOs 5.1 running on VMWare & Macbook. Nginx's version was 0.6.32. The default installation is very straightforward - configure, make & make install. I had to install pcre packages to my box before installing httpd server in order to enable rewrite module. I also used --prefix module to install application where i wanted:

[root@cluster1 nginx-0.6.32]# ./configure --prefix=/opt/nginx-0.6.32
[root@cluster1 nginx-0.6.32]# make
[root@cluster1 nginx-0.6.32]# make install

After this Nginx is ready to serve static files!


How to configure Nginx

When you move to your Nginx installation directory, here's what you see:

drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Oct 5 23:52 sbin
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Oct 5 23:52 html
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Oct 5 23:52 conf

Sbin directory has only nginx executable file which starts up httpd. Html directory is same as htdocs directory in Apache - copy your files here in order to serve 'em to the world! Conf-file has all configuration files.

When you start up your nginx (just go to sbin and type ./nginx in order to start your web server!) you get few more directories:

drwx------ 2 nobody root 4096 Oct 5 23:52 proxy_temp
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Oct 5 23:52 logs
drwx------ 2 nobody root 4096 Oct 5 23:52 fastcgi_temp
drwx------ 2 nobody root 4096 Oct 5 23:52 client_body_temp

In the conf-directory you can see the following files:

-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3610 Oct 5 23:52 win-utf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2726 Oct 5 23:52 nginx.conf.default
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2726 Oct 5 23:52 nginx.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2991 Oct 5 23:52 mime.types.default
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2991 Oct 5 23:52 mime.types
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2223 Oct 5 23:52 koi-win
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2837 Oct 5 23:52 koi-utf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 909 Oct 5 23:52 fastcgi_params.default
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 909 Oct 5 23:52 fastcgi_params

The most important file of them all is of course nginx.conf. The default configuration looks like this after installation:

#user nobody;
worker_processes 1;

#error_log logs/error.log;
#error_log logs/error.log notice;
#error_log logs/error.log info;

#pid logs/nginx.pid;


events {
worker_connections 1024;
}


These are default configuration parameters to set user and logging preferences. If you are your box to run many different applications it is a good idea to change default user to something else, like "nginx" or "www_user".

Worker_connections parameter sets the maximum number of connections each worker can handle. This is quite good default value.

The following part defines base settings for the http access:

http {
include mime.types;
default_type application/octet-stream;


You should not tamper round with mime types because you will likely end up with screwed up web server!

If you want to, you can also change default log format in the following part.

#log_format main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] $request '
# '"$status" $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
# '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';

#access_log logs/access.log main;


TCP nopush setting means that HTTP response hearders are all sent in one packet. Sendfile setting means that Nginx ignores the details of the file it is sending and uses kernel sendfile support instead. Keepalive setting defines how long server waits for users packets. This should be changed only to few seconds on busy sites. Gzip compression saves bandwith on site, depending what kind of packets server is sending.

sendfile on;
#tcp_nopush on;

#keepalive_timeout 0;
keepalive_timeout 65;

#gzip on;



The following server part is just like server settings on Apache HTTPD and if you have tampered 'round with Apache before this is quite straightforward to you.

server {
listen 80;
server_name localhost;

#charset koi8-r;

#access_log logs/host.access.log main;

location / {
root html;
index index.html index.htm;
}

#error_page 404 /404.html;

# redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html
#
error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;
location = /50x.html {
root html;
}


Example how to configure virtual host on Nginx:

# another virtual host using mix of IP-, name-, and port-based configuration
#
#server {
# listen 8000;
# listen somename:8080;
# server_name somename alias another.alias;

# location / {
# root html;
# index index.html index.htm;
# }
#}




These were basic examples of Nginx and what one can do with it. I stripped some configuration examples but here you can see the basics. Later we're going to configure Nginx to use PHP and we're going thru how to use mod_rewrite with Nginx.

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/site/nginx-0.6.37


when error happen ,pls run the following command line.

yum install pcre pcre-devel  openssl openssl-devel md5 md5-devel  sha1  sha1-devel  zlib  zlib-devel

and then execute:

make && make install


Then update the config file for nginx.


[root@TEST ~]# cd /usr/local/site/nginx/conf/


[root@TEST conf]# cat nginx.conf
user  mdrop;
worker_processes  1;
master_process on;
daemon off;

error_log  logs/error.log;
#error_log  logs/error.log  info;

#pid        logs/nginx.pid;


events {
    worker_connections  1024;
}


http {
    include       mime.types;
    default_type  application/octet-stream;

    log_format  main  '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] $request '
                      '"$status" $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
                      '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';

    access_log  logs/access.log  main;

    sendfile        on;
    tcp_nopush     on;
    tcp_nodelay     on;
    #keepalive_timeout  0;
    keepalive_timeout  65;


        gzip on;
        gzip_types text/html text/css ;
        gzip_comp_level 3;
        gzip_proxied any;
        gzip_vary on;

    server {
        listen       80;
        server_name  _*;

        #charset koi8-r;

        #access_log  logs/access.log  ;

  
        location ~* ".(jpg|jpeg|gif|css|png|js|ico|html|inc|mp3|xml|swf)$ {
            root   /usr/local/site/webroot/$host/;
            index  index.html index.htm index.php;
        }

        location / {
                proxy_pass   http://127.0.0.1:8080;
                proxy_set_header  Host  $host;
                proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-For  $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
                proxy_pass_header Server;

                client_max_body_size       8m;
                client_body_buffer_size    128k;

                proxy_connect_timeout      90;
                proxy_send_timeout         90;
                proxy_read_timeout         90;

                proxy_buffer_size          4k;
                proxy_buffers              64 32k;
                proxy_busy_buffers_size    64k;
                proxy_temp_file_write_size 64k;

        }

        #error_page  404              /404.html;

        # redirect server error pages to the static page /50x.html
        #
        error_page   500 502 503 504  /50x.html;
        location = /50x.html {
            root   html;
        }


        # deny access to .htaccess files, if Apache's document root
        # concurs with nginx's one
        #
        location ~ /".ht {
            deny  all;
        }
        location ~ /".svn {
            deny  all;
        }

        location ~ /"sql {
            deny  all;
        }

    }


    # another virtual host using mix of IP-, name-, and port-based configuration
    #
    #server {
    #    listen       8000;
    #    listen       somename:8080;
    #    server_name  somename  alias  another.alias;

    #    location / {
    #        root   html;
    #        index  index.html index.htm;
    #    }
    #}


    # HTTPS server
    #
    #server {
    #    listen       443;
    #    server_name  localhost;

    #    ssl                  on;
    #    ssl_certificate      cert.pem;
    #    ssl_certificate_key  cert.key;

    #    ssl_session_timeout  5m;

    #    ssl_protocols  SSLv2 SSLv3 TLSv1;
    #    ssl_ciphers  ALL:!ADH:!EXPORT56:RC4+RSA:+HIGH:+MEDIUM:+LOW:+SSLv2:+EXP;
    #    ssl_prefer_server_ciphers   on;

    #    location / {
    #        root   html;
    #        index  index.html index.htm;
    #    }
    #}

}