Nginx HTTP Server

Clement Nedelcu

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781849510868
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: System Administration
• Index: Computer Science

In Detail

Nginx is a lightweight HTTP server designed for high-traffic websites, with network scalability as primary objective. With the advent of high-speed Internet access, short loading times and fast transfer rates have become a necessity. This free open-source solution will either serve as full replacement of other software such as Apache, or stand in front of your existing infrastructure to improve its overall speed. However, migrating to Nginx requires some guidance.

This book serves as a detailed guide to setting up Nginx in different production situations: as standalone server, as reverse proxy, interacting with applications via FastCGI, and more. In addition, the complete directive reference will be your best friend at all stages of the configuration and maintenance processes.

This book is the perfect companion for both Nginx beginners and experienced administrators. For the former, it will take you through the complete process of setting up this lightweight HTTP server on your system and configuring its various modules to get it to do exactly what you need, in a fast and secure way. For the latter, it provides different angles of approach that can help you make the most of your current infrastructure. As the book progresses, it provides a complete reference to all the modules and directives of Nginx. It will explain how to replace your existing server with Nginx or configure Nginx to work as a frontend for your existing server.

By the end of this book, you will be geared up to implement Nginx as a web server that will boost the speed of all your web applications.

A handy guide to setting up Nginx as a standalone web server or as a reverse proxy, with complete directive and module references

Approach

The book includes detailed instructions for each of the processes it describes: downloading and installing the application, configuring and using modules, and much more. It provides a step-by-step tutorial to replace your existing web server with Nginx. With commented configuration sections and in-depth module descriptions, you will be able to make the most of the performance potential offered by Nginx.

Who this book is for

By covering both early setup stages and advanced topics, this book will suit web administrators interested in solutions to optimize their infrastructure, whether they are looking into replacing existing web server software or integrating a new tool cooperating with applications already up and running. If you, your visitors, and your operating system have been disappointed by Apache, this book is exactly what you need.

Nginx HTTP Server

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Table of Contents

Nginx HTTP Server

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Preparing your Work Environment

Setting up a terminal emulator

Finding and downloading PuTTY

Creating a session

Working with PuTTY and the shell

Basic shell commands

File and directory management

User and group management

Superuser account

User accounts

Group management

Programs and processes

Starting an application

System services

Process management

Finding the pid

An administrator's best friend top

Killing processes

Discovering the Linux filesystem

Directory structure

Special files and devices

Device types

Pseudo devices

Mounting a storage device

Files and inodes

EXT3 filesystem specifications

Filenames

Inodes

Atime, ctime, and mtime

Symbolic and hard links

File manipulation

Reading a file

Editing a file

Compression and archiving

System administration tools

Running a command as Superuser

Su command

Sudo command

System verification and maintenance

Disk Free

Disk Usage

Free memory

Software packages

Package managers

Downloading and installing packages manually

Building from source

Files and permissions

Understanding file permissions

Directory permissions

Octal representation

Changing permissions

Changing ownership and group

Summary

2. Downloading and Installing Nginx

Setting up the prerequisites

GCC-GNU Compiler Collection

PCRE library

zlib library

OpenSSL

Downloading Nginx

Websites and resources

Version branches

Features

Downloading and extracting

Configure options

The easy way

Path options

Prerequisites options

Module options

Modules enabled by default

Modules disabled by default

Miscellaneous options

Configuration examples

About the prefix switch

Regular HTTP and HTTPS servers

All modules enabled

Mail server proxy

Build configuration issues

Make sure you installed the prerequisites

Directories exist and are writable

Compiling and installing

Controlling the Nginx service

Daemons and services

User and group

Nginx command-line switches

Starting and stopping the daemon

Testing the configuration

Other switches

Adding Nginx as a system service

System V scripts

What is an init script?

Creating an init script for Nginx

Installing the script

Debian-based distributions

Red Hat-based distributions

Summary

3. Basic Nginx Configuration

Configuration file syntax

Configuration Directives

Organization and inclusions

Directive blocks

Advanced language rules

Directives accept specific syntaxes

Diminutives in directive values

Variables

String values

Base module directives

What are base modules?

Nginx process architecture

Core module directives

Events module

Configuration module

A configuration for your profile

Understanding the default configuration

Necessary adjustments

Adapting to your hardware

Testing your server

Creating a test server

Performance tests

Httperf

Autobench

OpenWebLoad

Upgrading Nginx gracefully

Summary

4. HTTP Configuration

HTTP Core module

Structure blocks

Module directives

Socket and host configuration

Paths and documents

Client requests

MIME Types

Limits and restrictions

File processing and caching

Other directives

Module variables

Request headers

Response headers

Nginx generated

The Location block

Location modifier

Search order and priority

Case 1:

Case 2:

Case 3:

Summary

5. Module Configuration

Rewrite module

Reminder on regular expressions

Purpose

PCRE syntax

Quantifiers

Captures

Internal requests

error_page

Rewrite

Infinite loops

Server Side Includes (SSI)

Conditional structure

Directives

Common rewrite rules

Performing a search

User profile page

Multiple parameters

Wikipedia-like

News website article

Discussion board

SSI module

Module directives and varia...

Table of contents

• Nginx HTTP Server