Revisiting Nginx (engine x) – Installation Guide on CentOS 5.5

It has been a long time since I worked with Nginx and decide to check it again. And was amazed to find that the server has improved and also its installation process is much simpler. Below are the revised installation steps.

1] Download Nginx from its official site (http://nginx.org/)

Stable version is available at

$ wget http://nginx.org/download/nginx-1.0.10.tar.gz

(Note : On production server use only stable version)

or

Development version is available at

$ wget http://nginx.org/download/nginx-1.1.8.tar.gz

2] Lets store downloaded file under a directory, for example 'download' directory

$ mkdir ~/download

$ mv nginx-1.0.10.tar.gz ~/download

3] We need to install following required Nginx dependencies - pcre pcre-devel zlib zlib-devel openssl openssl-devel

$ sudo yum install pcre pcre-devel zlib zlib-devel openssl openssl-devel

4] Create Nginx user and group id

$ sudo /usr/sbin/groupadd nginx

$ sudo /usr/sbin/useradd –g nginx –s /bin/false nginx

5] Proceed with source installation of Nginx

$ cd ~/download

$ tar -zxvf nginx-1.0.10.tar.gz

$ cd nginx-1.0.10.tar.gz

6] Configure Nginx source

$ ./configure \

--user=nginx \

--group=nginx \

--with-http_realip_module \

--with-http_flv_module \

--with-http_gzip_static_module \

--with-http_ssl_module \

--with-http_stub_status_module

7] Make and install

$ make

$ sudo make install

8] Change ownerships before we proceed

$ sudo chown nginx:nginx –R /usr/local/nginx

9] To start Nginx

$ sudo /usr/local/nginx/sbin/nginx

If we get no error while starting Nginx then lets check running process status

[joel@localhost ~]$ ps aux | grep nginx

root 14802 0.0 0.0 4076 500 ? Ss 01:27 0:00 nginx: master process /usr/local/nginx/sbin/nginx

nginx 14803 0.0 0.1 4264 1092 ? S 01:27 0:00 nginx: worker process

joel 15004 0.0 0.0 4016 708 pts/1 S+ 01:39 0:00 grep nginx

10] And now we are ready to use Nginx

Open http://localhost or http://127.0.0.1 on your system browser and Nginx shows up.

Bingo!!!

11] To shutdown Nginx

$ sudo kill `cat /usr/local/nginx/logs/nginx.pid`

Nginx (engine x) – Installation Guide on CentOS

1] Download source code of Nginx from the official site (http://nginx.net/)

To get stable version as per this tutorial dated is

$ wget http://sysoev.ru/nginx/nginx-0.7.61.tar.gz

or

To get development version as per this tutorial dated is

$ wget http://sysoev.ru/nginx/nginx-0.8.7.tar.gz

(Note : For production server use stable version only)


2] We store downloaded file under a directory, for example we will use 'download' directory

$ mkdir ~/download

$ cp nginx-0.6.36.tar.gz ~/download

$ cd download


3] Install required Nginx dependencies

pcre pcre-devel zlib zlib-devel openssl openssl-devel

so using default package manager of CentOS

$ sudo yum install pcre pcre-devel zlib zlib-devel openssl openssl-devel


4] Create required Nginx user and group ids

$ sudo /usr/sbin/groupadd nginx

$ sudo /usr/sbin/useradd –g nginx –s /bin/false nginx


5] Proceed with source installation of Nginx

$ cd ~/download

unzip the source file

$ tar -zxvf nginx-0.7.61.tar.gz

$ cd nginx-0.7.61


6] Configure Nginx source

$ ./configure \

--prefix=/usr/local/nginx \

--sbin-path=/usr/local/sbin \

--conf-path=/usr/local/nginx/nginx.conf \

--http-log-path=/var/log/nginx/access.log \

--error-log-path=/var/log/nginx/error.log \

--pid-path=/var/run/nginx/nginx.pid \

--lock-path=/var/lock/nginx.lock \

--user=nginx \

--group=nginx \

--http-client-body-temp-path=/var/tmp/nginx/client/ \

--http-proxy-temp-path=/var/tmp/nginx/proxy/ \

--http-fastcgi-temp-path=/var/tmp/nginx/fcgi/ \

--with-http_ssl_module \

--with-http_realip_module \

--with-http_perl_module \

--with-http_flv_module \

--with-http_gzip_static_module \

--with-http_stub_status_module \

--with-md5-asm \

--with-md5=auto/lib/md5 \

--with-sha1-asm \

--with-sha1=auto/lib/sha1


7] Make and Install

$ make

$ sudo make install


8] Change ownerships before we proceed

$ sudo chown nginx:nginx –R /usr/local/nginx


9] Create following directories with required ownership to proceed

$ sudo mkdir -p /var/tmp/nginx /{client,proxy,fcgi}

$ sudo chown nginx:nginx -R /var/tmp/nginx


10] Start Nginx

$ sudo /usr/local/sbin/nginx

If we get no error while starting Nginx then lets check running process status by executing following command and getting similar output as below

$ ps aux | grep nginx

root 10009 0.0 0.0 5524 592 ? Ss 07:21 0:00 nginx: master process /usr/local/sbin/nginx

nginx 10010 0.0 0.0 5716 928 ? S 07:21 0:00 nginx: worker process


11] And we are ready to use Nginx

Open your browser and type ip address of your server or just type localhost.

http://localhost

http://127.0.0.1


Bingo!!!

12] Shutdown Nginx

$ sudo kill `cat /var/run/nginx/nginx.pid`