Nginx

nginx is my new favourite webserver. This page contains my notes for when I am installing it on a new machine (well, in a new jail ofcourse).

Modules

I generally install nginx with as few modules as possible enabled:

[tykling@vpnwiki /usr/ports/www/nginx]$ make showconfig | grep "=on"
     IPV6=on "Enable IPv6"
     HTTP_MODULE=on "Enable HTTP module"
     HTTP_REWRITE_MODULE=on "Enable http_rewrite module"

Config

After installing nginx I replace the default config with something more sensible, like this example for a mediawiki install:

worker_processes  1;
error_log  /usr/local/www/logs/error.log;

events {
    worker_connections  1024;
}

http {
    include       mime.types;
    default_type  text/plain;
    log_format  main  '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" $status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" "$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';
    error_log  /usr/local/www/logs/vpnwiki.ryst.cn.dom.error.log;
    sendfile        off;
    keepalive_timeout  65;

    server {
        listen 80 default_server;
        listen [::]:80 default_server;
        access_log  /usr/local/www/logs/vpnwiki.ryst.cn.dom.access.log  main;

        server_name wiki.tyk.nu;
        root /usr/local/www/mediawiki;

        client_max_body_size 5m;
        client_body_timeout 60;

        //mediawiki specific config
        location / {
                try_files $uri $uri/ @rewrite;
                index  index.php;
        }

        location @rewrite {
                rewrite ^/(.*)$ /index.php?title=$1&$args;
        }

        location ^~ /maintenance/ {
                return 403;
        }

        location ~ \.php$ {
            include fastcgi_params;
            fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
            fastcgi_pass unix:/var/php/php-fpm.socket;
        }

        location ~* \.(js|css|png|jpg|jpeg|gif|ico)$ {
                try_files $uri /index.php;
                expires max;
                log_not_found off;
        }

        location = /_.gif {
                expires max;
                empty_gif;
        }

        location ^~ /cache/ {
                deny all;
        }

        location /dumps {
                root /usr/local/www/mediawiki/local;
                autoindex on;
        }
    }
}