Introduction to Nginx

Friday 10 May 2024

Introduction to Nginx

What is Nginx?

HTTP and reverse proxy server
widely used webserver

How to install Nginx on Linux?

Nginx serves a static HTML file by default so we can verify the deployment.

Where is Nginx binary?

# which nginx
/usr/sbin/nginx

To check Nginx version:

# nginx -v
nginx version: nginx/1.24.0

Nginx Configuration

Nginx configuration file is /etc/nginx/nginx.conf.

# cat /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

#######################################################################

# This is the main Nginx configuration file.

# More information about the configuration options is available on

# * the English wiki - http://wiki.nginx.org/Main

# * the Russian documentation - http://sysoev.ru/nginx/

#######################################################################

#----------------------------------------------------------------------

# Main Module - directives that cover basic functionality

# http://wiki.nginx.org/NginxHttpMainModule

#----------------------------------------------------------------------

user mywebapp-user;

# user nginx;

worker_processes auto;

worker_rlimit_nofile 10000;

#timer_resolution 100ms;

error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;

#error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log notice;

#error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log info;

pid /var/run/nginx.pid;

#----------------------------------------------------------------------

# Events Module

# http://wiki.nginx.org/NginxHttpEventsModule

#----------------------------------------------------------------------

events {

worker_connections 4000;

# worker_connections 1024;

use epoll;

# accept_mutex on;

}

#----------------------------------------------------------------------

# HTTP Core Module

# http://wiki.nginx.org/NginxHttpCoreModule

#----------------------------------------------------------------------

http {

server_names_hash_bucket_size 128;

map $http_cf_ipcountry $allowed_country {

default 1;

"KP" 0; # Korea, Democratic Peoples Republic of (North Korea)

}

include /etc/nginx/mime.types;

default_type application/octet-stream;

log_format main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$host"

"$request" '

'$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '

'"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"

"$http_cf_ipcountry"';

access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log main;

gzip on;

gzip_vary on;

gzip_types text/plain

text/xml

text/css

application/json

application/x-javascript;

gzip_min_length 1024;

server_tokens off;

# Replace client IP from proxies

real_ip_header X-Forwarded-For;

set_real_ip_from 10.0.0.0/8; # AWS VPC CIDR

set_real_ip_from 108.22.214.0/22; # Cloudflare

...

set_real_ip_from 2b06:27c0::/29; # Cloudflare

real_ip_recursive on;

sendfile on;

# tcp_nopush on;

# tcp_nodelay on;

keepalive_timeout 60;

server {

listen 80;

server_name "";

return 403;

}

# Load config files from the /etc/nginx/conf.d directory

include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;

}

This is a base config file which is usually enough if we're hosting a single website.

If we're hosting multiple websites/domains/brands, we want to keep their configuration isolated in separate files which reside in /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf. We create a config file for each website and define for example different error and access log files.

# ls -la /etc/nginx/conf.d/

total 56

drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root 175 May 8 13:07 .

drwxr-xr-x. 4 root root 16384 May 8 13:07 ..

drwxr-x---. 2 ec2-user ec2-user 16384 May 8 13:07 includes

-rw-r-----. 1 ec2-user ec2-user 1474 May 8 13:03 nginx.brandA.conf

-rw-r-----. 1 ec2-user ec2-user 1434 May 8 13:03 nginx.brandB.conf

-rw-r-----. 1 ec2-user ec2-user 1545 May 8 13:03 nginx.brandC.conf

-rw-r-----. 1 ec2-user ec2-user 858 May 8 13:03 nginx_status.conf

Let's check what can be in the override file:

# cat /etc/nginx/conf.d/nginx.brandA.conf

server {

# server settings

listen 80;

# listen 443 ssl;

server_name ~^(dev-|stage-|beta-)?(mywebapp)\.mydomainA\.com$;

# server_name phpfpm.local;

# server_name localhost;

resolver 149.214.169.253; # Amazon EC2 inside VPC

# log settings

error_log /home/mywebapp-user/logs/nginx/error-mywebapp.log;

access_log /home/mywebapp-user/logs/nginx/access-mywebapp.log main;

# client settings

client_body_temp_path /home/mywebapp-user/tmp/client_body;

# block visitors from certain countries

if ($allowed_country = 0) {

return 403; # forbidden

}

# path settings

root /home/mywebapp-user/public;

index index.html index.htm index.php;

# protect private files

location ~ ^/private/(.*)$ {

include conf.d/includes/nginx.trusted-ips.conf;

include conf.d/includes/nginx.php-fpm-brandA.conf;

}

# serve dmg files

location ~ \.dmg$ {