About
Nginx is an HTTP server as well as a Proxy (IMAP/POP3 and reverse) written to address the C10K problem and handle more efficiently client requests. Nginx doesn't rely on threads to handle requests. Instead it uses a much more scalable event-driven (asynchronous) architecture. This architecture uses small, but more importantly, predictable amounts of memory under load.
Installation
sudo apt-get install nginx
ifconfig eth0 | grep inet | awk '{ print $2 }'
sudo service nginx start
update-rc.d nginx defaultsGeneral conf: All Nginx configuration files are located in the /etc/nginx/ directory. The primary configuration file is /etc/nginx/nginx.conf.
Serving
You can find the default nginx serving directory under:
/srv/www/example.com/public_html/index.html
Using Nginx as a Proxy
server {
# Catch all the requests comming to db01.example.com"
server_name db01.example.com "";
listen 109.200.XX.XXX:4040;
gzip on;
gzip_min_length 2000;
gzip_proxied any;
gzip_types text/html application/json;
proxy_read_timeout 60s;
client_max_body_size 64M;
################################
# Panagiotis Auth Config Rules #
################################
allow 109.200.XX.XXX; #example.com
deny all;
# try serving static files directly
location ~ /\+f/ {
error_page 418 = @proxy_to_app;
if ($request_method != GET) {
return 418;
}
expires max;
try_files /+files$uri @proxy_to_app;
}
# try serving docs directly
location ~ /\+doc/ {
try_files $uri @proxy_to_app;
}
location / {
error_page 418 = @proxy_to_app;
return 418;
}
location @proxy_to_app {
# First attempt to serve request as file, then
# as directory, then fall back to displaying a 404.
# try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;
proxy_pass http://localhost:4040;
# Uncomment to enable naxsi on this location
# include /etc/nginx/naxsi.rules
proxy_set_header X-outside-url $scheme://$host:$server_port;
proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
expires -1; # no-cache
}
#location / {
# proxy_pass http://localhost:8080/;
#}
}Enable directory Listing
Enabling directory listing in a folder in nginx is simple enough with just an autoindex on;directive inside the location directive. You can also enable sitewide directory listing by putting it in the server block or even enable directory access for all sites by putting it in the http block.
server {
server_name db01.example.com "";
listen 4141;
gzip on;
gzip_min_length 2000;
gzip_proxied any;
gzip_types text/html application/json;
proxy_read_timeout 60s;
client_max_body_size 64M;
#Path to requirement files
root /usr/share/nginx/devpi-requirements/;
################################
# panagiotis Auth Config Rules #
################################
allow all;
location / {
#index index.php index.html index.htm;
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html index.php;
autoindex on;
}
#location /somedir {
# autoindex on;
#}
}How To Create a self-signed SSL Certificate on Nginx
TLS, or transport layer security, and its predecessor SSL, which stands for secure sockets layer, are web protocols used to wrap normal traffic in a protected, encrypted wrapper. A self-signed certificate will not validate the identity of your server for your users since it is not signed by one of their web browser's trusted certificate authorities, but it will allow you to encrypt communications with your web clients. We can start off by creating a directory that will be used to hold all of our SSL information. We should create this under the Nginx configuration directory:
sudo mkdir /etc/nginx/ssl
Now that we have a location to place our files, we can create the SSL key and certificate files in one motion by typing:
sudo openssl req -x509 -nodes -days 365 -newkey rsa:2048 -keyout /etc/nginx/ssl/nginx.key -out /etc/nginx/ssl/nginx.crt
The command output will look something like this:
Country Name (2 letter code) [AU]:US
State or Province Name (full name) [Some-State]:New York
Locality Name (eg, city) []:New York City
Organization Name (eg, company) [Internet Widgits Pty Ltd]:Bouncy Castles, Inc.
Organizational Unit Name (eg, section) []:Ministry of Water Slides
Common Name (e.g. server FQDN or YOUR name) []:your_domain.com
Email Address []:admin@your_domain.com
Both of the files you created will be placed in the /etc/nginx/ssl directory.Adding extra nginx configuration
The only thing we would need to do to get SSL working on this same server block, while still allowing regular HTTP connections, is add a these lines in the nginx configuration file:
listen 443 ssl;
ssl_certificate /etc/nginx/ssl/nginx.crt;
ssl_certificate_key /etc/nginx/ssl/nginx.key;
sudo service nginx restartThis should reload your site configuration, now allowing it to respond to both HTTP and HTTPS (SSL) requests.
Your site should now have SSL functionality. To test both HTTP and HTTPS functionality open a web browser and visit your server's domain name or IP address:
http://server_domain_or_IP
https://server_domain_or_IP
https://server_domain_or_IP:443References
https://www.linode.com/docs/websites/nginx/basic-nginx-configuration