In this series of articles I'll explain how to install and setup the super light and fast NGINX webserver on your Linux box and get it to host rails apps and maybe a little extra.
First off let's install NGINX
To install the latest copy of NGINX you're gonna need to build from source so make sure you install the build-essentials (gcc), to do this run...
sudo aptitude install build-essential
Now you've got the GCC compiler installed you can build from source, so let's download the latest copy of NGINX...
First some dependencies,
sudo aptitude install libpcre3 libpcre3-dev libpcrecpp0 libssl-dev zlib1g-dev
Now the bad boy himself,
cd ~/sources/
wget http://sysoev.ru/nginx/nginx-0.5.35.tar.gz
tar -zxvf nginx-0.5.35.tar.gz
cd nginx-0.5.35/
now configure the source,
./configure --sbin-path=/usr/local/sbin --with-http_ssl_module
it'll finish with a summary of locations like,
nginx path prefix: "/usr/local/nginx"
nginx binary file: "/usr/local/sbin"
nginx configuration file: "/usr/local/nginx/conf/nginx.conf"
write these down before you continue, very important!
now build,
make
and install
sudo make install
Running NGINX
As those last summary lines told us, nginx lives in -> /usr/local/sbin/nginx, so let's go start it,
sudo /usr/local/sbin/nginx
now if you navigate to your boxes ip address you should see a fancy 'welcome to nginx' message, wahey! you have it installed.
Final part, startup scripts
Now the next script I'm very thankful for PickledOnion over at Slicehost.com for providing.
First off let's create an init script so we can start it more nicely and NGINX will start on reboot, so...
sudo nano /etc/init.d/nginx
And now copy & paste this init script into nano...
#! /bin/sh
### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides: nginx
# Required-Start: $all
# Required-Stop: $all
# Default-Start: 2 3 4 5
# Default-Stop: 0 1 6
# Short-Description: starts the nginx web server
# Description: starts nginx using start-stop-daemon
### END INIT INFO
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
DAEMON=/usr/local/sbin/nginx
NAME=nginx
DESC=nginx
test -x $DAEMON || exit 0
# Include nginx defaults if available
if [ -f /etc/default/nginx ] ; then
. /etc/default/nginx
fi
set -e
case "$1" in
start)
echo -n "Starting $DESC: "
start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile /usr/local/nginx/logs/$NAME.pid \
--exec $DAEMON -- $DAEMON_OPTS
echo "$NAME."
;;
stop)
echo -n "Stopping $DESC: "
start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --pidfile /usr/local/nginx/logs/$NAME.pid \
--exec $DAEMON
echo "$NAME."
;;
restart|force-reload)
echo -n "Restarting $DESC: "
start-stop-daemon --stop --quiet --pidfile \
/usr/local/nginx/logs/$NAME.pid --exec $DAEMON
sleep 1
start-stop-daemon --start --quiet --pidfile \
/usr/local/nginx/logs/$NAME.pid --exec $DAEMON -- $DAEMON_OPTS
echo "$NAME."
;;
reload)
echo -n "Reloading $DESC configuration: "
start-stop-daemon --stop --signal HUP --quiet --pidfile /usr/local/nginx/logs/$NAME.pid \
--exec $DAEMON
echo "$NAME."
;;
*)
N=/etc/init.d/$NAME
echo "Usage: $N {start|stop|restart|reload|force-reload}" >&2
exit 1
;;
esac
exit 0
Yes it's a monster, I've copied it over to my server so you can grab it at..
Now lets use it with...
sudo chmod +x /etc/init.d/nginx
sudo /usr/sbin/update-rc.d -f nginx defaults
You should now see...
Adding system startup for /etc/init.d/nginx ...
/etc/rc0.d/K20nginx -> ../init.d/nginx
/etc/rc1.d/K20nginx -> ../init.d/nginx
/etc/rc6.d/K20nginx -> ../init.d/nginx
/etc/rc2.d/S20nginx -> ../init.d/nginx
/etc/rc3.d/S20nginx -> ../init.d/nginx
/etc/rc4.d/S20nginx -> ../init.d/nginx
/etc/rc5.d/S20nginx -> ../init.d/nginx
Now NGINX will startup on reboot and you can run these commands to control it better.
Start
sudo /etc/init.d/nginx start
Stop
sudo /etc/init.d/nginx stop
Restart
sudo /etc/init.d/nginx restart
Next up i'll put together the nginx scripts I use myself which should help you out a lot when hosting your site with this great tool.
Final Note
On a later note you may get times when you change your NGINX .conf scripts restart NGINX and it doesn't seem to have taken your latest config changes, I get this myself sometimes.
What you can do is brute-force kill the NGINX process and restart it with...
ps aux | grep nginx
which will return the process id NGINX is running at, then kill it with...
kill [processid]
and now start NGINX from fresh,
sudo /etc/init.d/nginx start
.Conf Templates
For your info and more so the guys who have working NGINX setups, I've put example config files in my downloads area, with direct links here....
