In one of my previous posts I have described very powerful Unix admin tool - Nginx. As I said, main problem of this server is lack of English documentation. That is why I decided to write this post with list of typical nginx configurations and example configuration snippets for these configurations.

All sample configuration files are tested on up to date version of nginx, which has been compiled and installed with following commands:

# ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/nginx --with-http_ssl_module # make # make install

So, you can simply download my sample, rename it to nginx.conf and adjust listening/proxying settings, place conf file to /usr/local/nginx/conf/ and start your server.

Using nginx as simple web server for static files

Nginx can be easily set up as efficient web server for static files distribution. I am using this configuration in my projects on images.someproject.com sub-domains for images distribution.

Sample configuration file can be downloaded here.

Using nginx as web server with PHP support

If you need to use nginx with PHP, you can setup PHP as FastCGI and let nginx to forward all PHP queries to some FastCGI port (tcp/socket). To use this configuration you need to start PHP as FastCGI using some third party software like spawn-fcgi from lighttpd. (Notice: I am going to describe this process in one of the future posts.)

To enable PHP support, you need to add special location section to your config file:

# pass the PHP scripts to FastCGI server listening on 127.0.0.1:9000
#
location ~ \.php$ {
  fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:12345;
  fastcgi_index  index.php;

  fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  /usr/local/nginx/html$fastcgi_script_name;
  fastcgi_param  QUERY_STRING     $query_string;
  fastcgi_param  REQUEST_METHOD   $request_method;
  fastcgi_param  CONTENT_TYPE     $content_type;
  fastcgi_param  CONTENT_LENGTH   $content_length;
}

Sample configuration file can be downloaded here.

Using nginx as web server with SSI support

Server-Side Includes (aka SSI) is another interesting feature of nginx. As for now, following ssi instructions are supported: config, echo, if, include, set.

SSI support can be anabled by single line configuration command in your config file:

location / {
        ssi  on;
        ...
    }

Sample configuration file can be downloaded here.

Using nginx as https-enabled web server

You need https-access to your Nginx-powered site? No problems! Nginx supports https and can be used to implement secured web-server with SSLv2, SSLv3 or TLSv1.

To enable https-support you should have certificate and key files. How to obtain them, you can read in SSL FAQ. When you will obtain them, you can enable ssl-module:

server {
        listen               443;
        ssl                  on;
        ssl_certificate      /usr/local/nginx/conf/cert.pem;
        ssl_certificate_key  /usr/local/nginx/conf/cert.key;
        keepalive_timeout    70;
        ...
    }

Sample configuration file can be downloaded here.

Using nginx as reverse-proxy server before some another web-server

If you have some large web-site and you have noticed, that your Apache can not handle more load, you can put nginx before your primary web-server to use it as light reverse-proxy and as web-server to handle requests to static files.

Thanks to nginx flexibility, you can pass any types of requests to backend server by using location sections (all files, only dynamic content requests or some specific locations in your web-server tree):

location / {
    proxy_pass        http://localhost:8000/;
    proxy_set_header  X-Real-IP  $remote_addr;
}

Sample configuration file can be downloaded here.

Using nginx for virtual hosting platforms

One of the interesting use cases for Nginx is virtual hosting platform because it meets all requirements for good hosting server: it is efficient, it supports all popular virtual hosting methods and it has very good internal structure, so it can be easily extended in for any specific areas.

As for now, it is being used by many hosting companies as reverse proxy and I am using it on my free hosting service with millions unique visitors per day.

If you vant to try virtual hosting feature, you can create additional server sections in your config file (first section will be default):

http {
    server {
        listen  192.168.10.1;
        listen  192.168.10.1:8000;

        server_name   one.example.com  www.one.example.com;
        ...
    }

    server {
        listen  192.168.10.1;
        listen  192.168.10.2:8000;
        listen  9000;

        server_name   two.example.com  www.two.example.com
                      three.example.com  www.three.example.com;
        ...
    }

    server {
        listen  9000;

        server_name   four.example.com  www.four.example.com;
        ...
    }
}

Sample configuration file for small virtual hosting can be downloaded here.

As you can see from my small overview, nginx is very flexible software and you can do many interesting things with it. If you have any comments, questions or suggestions, feel free to drop them here in comments for this article and I will try to answer for all of them.

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