Master Nginx Quickly: A Comprehensive Guide Loved by Thousands

Why Choose Nginx?

Nginx is a high‑performance web and reverse‑proxy server that uses fewer resources and supports far more concurrent connections than Apache, handling up to 50,000 connections thanks to its epoll/kqueue event model.

As a Load‑Balancing Server

It can serve Rails and PHP directly and act as an HTTP proxy for external services. Written in C, Nginx’s CPU and memory overhead are significantly lower than alternatives such as Perlbal.

Installation and Reliability

Installation is straightforward and the configuration file is concise (even supporting Perl syntax). The server has very few bugs, can run 24/7 for months without restart, and allows seamless version upgrades without service interruption.

Adoption in Mainland China

Major sites such as Sina, NetEase, Tencent and the micro‑blog platform Plurk rely on Nginx.

Learning Material

The article offers an "Nginx Study Note" of 8 chapters and 113 pages, covering basics, core configuration, advanced settings, rewrite rules, reverse‑proxy functions, system parameter tuning, and an LNMP WordPress project.

Core Configuration Details

Master process functions:

Read and validate Nginx configuration files.

Create, bind and close socket connections.

Manage worker processes according to the configuration.

Accept external commands such as restart, upgrade and shutdown.

Perform graceful upgrades without interrupting service.

Open log files and obtain file descriptors.

Handle rollback on upgrade failure.

Compile and execute Perl scripts.

Worker process functions:

Accept and process client requests.

Dispatch requests to appropriate functional modules.

Perform I/O calls to retrieve response data.

Communicate with backend servers and receive processing results.

Cache data, access cache indexes, and query cached content.

Send response results back to the client.

Receive commands from the master process (e.g., restart, upgrade, exit).

Virtual Host Example

Creating a "Mobile web" site based on different IPs, ports and domain names relies on the core module ngx_http_core_module to implement virtual hosting.

Location Directive Usage

The article provides detailed examples of how to configure location blocks for request routing.

Four‑Layer Access Control

Access control is implemented via the ngx_http_access_module, allowing IP‑based request filtering.

File Existence Check

The try_files directive checks files in order, returning the first existing file or directory; if none are found, it performs an internal redirect to the last argument, which must exist to avoid a 500 error.

Advanced Configuration – HTTPS

HTTPS combines HTTP with SSL/TLS to encrypt data, protecting sensitive information. Many high‑security services such as banking websites and email platforms adopt HTTPS.

Reverse Proxy

A reverse proxy forwards external user requests to internal web servers and returns the responses, a common pattern for load distribution and security.

Logical Call Relationships

Production Deployment Architecture

Nginx File Showcase