Nginx Installation, Configuration, and Basic Usage Guide

Nginx is a lightweight web server, reverse proxy, and mail proxy that excels in low memory usage and high concurrency. It is widely used for load balancing and serving static content.

Installation steps :

1. Download the source package from http://nginx.org/en/download.html and upload it to a Linux host.

2. Extract the archive: tar -zxvf nginx-1.21.6.tar.gz 3. Enter the source directory and run the configure script. If dependencies are missing, install them and re‑run the script:

yum install -y gcc

yum install -y pcre pcre-devel

yum install -y zlib zlib-devel

4. Compile and install:

make

make install

The installation path can be changed with ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/nginx. After successful installation, the nginx binary resides in /usr/local/nginx/sbin.

Starting and stopping :

Start the server: /usr/local/nginx/sbin/nginx Stop the server (graceful): nginx -s quit Force stop: nginx -s stop Check status with ps -ef | grep nginx or systemctl status nginx.

Creating a systemd service :

Create /usr/lib/systemd/system/nginx.service with the following content (adjust the paths if necessary):

[Unit]
Description=nginx - web server
After=network.target remote-fs.target nss-lookup.target

[Service]
Type=forking
PIDFile=/usr/local/nginx/logs/nginx.pid
ExecStartPre=/usr/local/nginx/sbin/nginx -t -c /usr/local/nginx/conf/nginx.conf
ExecStart=/usr/local/nginx/sbin/nginx -c /usr/local/nginx/conf/nginx.conf
ExecReload=/usr/local/nginx/sbin/nginx -s reload
ExecStop=/usr/local/nginx/sbin/nginx -s stop
ExecQuit=/usr/local/nginx/sbin/nginx -s quit
PrivateTmp=true

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Reload systemd and start the service:

systemctl daemon-reload

systemctl start nginx.service

Verify with systemctl status nginx or ps -ef | grep nginx.

Directory structure :

The main directories under the installation prefix are conf (configuration files), html (static files), logs (access and error logs), and sbin (the nginx executable).

Basic configuration (nginx.conf) :

Key directives include: worker_processes 1; – number of worker processes. worker_connections 1024; – maximum connections per worker. include mime.types; – MIME type mappings. default_type application/octet-stream; – fallback MIME type. sendfile on; – enable zero‑copy file transmission. keepalive_timeout 65; – idle connection timeout.

A simple server block listening on port 80 serves files from the html directory and defines an error page for 5xx responses.

server_name usage :

Multiple virtual hosts can be defined by different server_name values. Wildcards (e.g., *.example.com) and regular expressions (e.g., ~^[0-9]+\.example\.com$) are supported to match a range of domain names.