General Information

Installation and configuration of Nginx web server.

Checklist

• Distro(s): Enterprise Linux 6/7

Installation of Nginx can be completed via repo (Official Nginx, EPEL, or Software Collections) or compiling.

Nginx.org has pre-built packages. You can select mainline (newer) or stable.

Versions as of 04/13/2016:

• Mainline: 1.9.14
• Stable: 1.8.1
• Legacy: 1.6.3 and below

1. Add a nginx repo file
   • Stable Repo:

     vim /etc/yum.repos.d/nginx.repo
     [nginx]
     name=nginx repo
     baseurl=http://nginx.org/packages/centos/7/$basearch/
     gpgcheck=0
     enabled=1

   • Mainline Repo:

     vim /etc/yum.repos.d/nginx.repo
     [nginx]
     name=nginx repo
     baseurl=http://nginx.org/packages/mainline/centos/7/$basearch/
     gpgcheck=0
     enabled=1

2. Install

   yum install nginx

Versions as of 04/13/2016

• CentOS 7.2: Nginx 1.6.3

Procedure

• Install the EPEL repo
• Install Nginx

  yum install nginx

Versions as of 04/13/2016:

• nginx 1.4 (legacy)
• nginx 1.6 (legacy)
• nginx 1.8 (stable)

1. Add the software collections repo.
2. Install

   yum install rh-nginx18

3. Enable the software collection

   scl enable rh-nginx18 bash

   1. Run signal commands (nginx -s signal) as normal from the Operation section below

Building from source is usually done for specific functionality and is more time consuming.

1. Install pre-reqs

   yum install gcc pcre-devel zlib-devel

2. Download a tarball (Example: Stable)

   wget http://nginx.org/download/nginx-1.8.1.tar.gz

3. Unarchive/unpack

   tar -zxvf nginx-1.8.1.tar.gz

4. Change into directory

   cd nginx-1.8.1/

5. Configure nginx

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

   1. Available configuration options: http://nginx.org/en/docs/configure.html
6. Compile

   make

7. Install

   make install

• Main Config: /etc/nginx/nginx.conf
  • Alt Main (Compiled): /usr/local/nginx/conf/nginx.conf
• Additional Config: /etc/nginx/conf.d/
  • Alt Additional Config (Compiled): No default

Controlling the nginx web server.

Nginx can be controlled via the system's service commands or nginx executable signals.

• Main nginx executable: /usr/sbin/nginx
  • Alt main nginx executable (Compiled): /usr/local/nginx/sbin/nginx

• Autostart the nginx web server upon system startup

systemctl enable nginx

• Evaluate config files; if syntax is ok, start

systemctl start nginx

or

nginx

• Stop the nginx processes now
• Kills current sessions

systemctl stop nginx

or

nginx -s stop

• Equivalent to Apache httpd's “graceful” restart
• Check syntax
  • if ok, then spawn new workers with new config and signal old workers to shutdown after current requests are complete
  • if NOT ok, continue using old configuration

systemctl reload nginx

or

nginx -s reload

• Kill worker processes immediately

systemctl restart nginx

• Equivalent to Apache httpd's “graceful-stop”
• Wait for worker processes to finish serving current requests, then stop.
• Do not accept new requests

nginx -s quit