nginx

Nginx is a pretty good proxy, it's generally recommended to run it everywhere.

Install

With nix do:

$ nix-env -i nginx-1.9.11

commands

$ nginx -s stop        # quit nginx server (SIGTERM)
$ nginx -s quit        # quit nginx server (SIGQUIT)
$ nginx -s reopen      # reopen nginx server (SIGUSR1)
$ nginx -s reload      # reload service (SIGHUP)
$ nginx -t file.conf   # assert file

point nginx to different conf file

$ nginx -p "$(pwd)/" -c './conf/nginx.conf'

Configuring a static server

Nginx uses namespaces and directives for its configuration. Directives for a static server:

• listen: the port the server will listen at
• server_name: match the URL and apply the rules on it
• root: directory (static) files are stored in
• location: takes string / regex and a block. try_files: attempt to read files in a certain order. Also looks for .html extentions and matches those

server {
  listen 80;
  server_name example.com;
  root /var/www/example;
  location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;
  }
}

• nginx directives

match exact string with location

location = / { ... }

variables

• $uri: uri that was received

Example config

events {
  worker_connections  1024;
}

http {
  server {
    listen 127.0.0.1:3000;
    server_name localhost;

    access_log /tmp/localhost.log;
    charset utf-8;

     location / {
       proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:1337/;
       proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
       proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
       proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
       proxy_set_header X-Nginx-Proxy true;

       proxy_redirect off;
    }
  }
}

example root config

daemon off;
pid /var/run/nginx.pid;

user www;
error_log stderr notice;

worker_processes auto;
events {
  multi_accept on;
  use epoll;
  worker_connections 1024;
}

http {
  # Somehow it's not inherited by vhosts (server{} context) when using with 'stderr' value.
  # Therefore it's re-defined here to avoid specyfing it for each vhost.
  error_log stderr notice;

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

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

  include /etc/nginx/hosts.d/*.conf;
  include /data/conf/nginx/hosts.d/*.conf;
}

• https://github.com/million12/docker-nginx/blob/master/container-files/etc/nginx/nginx.conf

start nginx in non daemon mode

# nginx.conf
daemon off;

• nginx/core_module

OpenResty

OpenResty allows extending nginx with lua to turn it into a full-fledged webserver.

directives

• access_by_lua
• content_by_lua
• header_filter_by_lua

HTTP2

server {
  listen      80  default_server;
  ## Needed when behind HAProxy with SSL termination + HTTP/2 support
  listen      81  default_server http2 proxy_protocol;
  listen      443 default_server ssl http2;

  ssl_certificate       /etc/ssl/dummy.crt;
  ssl_certificate_key   /etc/ssl/dummy.key;

  root        /data/www/default;
  index       index.html;
}

• http://m12.io/blog/http-2-with-haproxy-and-nginx-guide
• https://github.com/million12/docker-nginx

See Also

• scripting nginx with lua
• openresty/lua-nginx-module
• nginx introduction